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SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY, Publishers. 
NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO. 




CHARLES LAMB. 



The Silver Series of English and American Classics 



SELECTED ESSAYS 



OF 



CHARLES LAMB 



EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
BY 

ERNEST DRESSEL NORTH 

AUTHOR OF "A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES LAMB " AND 
"THE WIT AND WISDOM OF CHARLES LAMB " 




: - : • 



SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 



cc4 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copitd Received 

JUL. 13 1901 

Copyright entry 

i<V»^oi 

ASS<X»XXc N». 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1901, 
By SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY. 



■• '**. •*! •"• i •; ••• •'• ••; •"« 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

PREFACE 5 

INTRODUCTION 7 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 27 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 29 

SELECTED ESSAYS: 

The Superannuated Man ....... 31 

Dream Children ........ 40 

Old China .......... 45 

A Dissertation on Roast Pig 52 

Imperfect Sympathies ....... 61 

Christ's Hospital ........ 71 

Oxford in the Vacation 86 

NOTES 95 



PREFACE. 



A vast number of young people owe their first introduc- 
tion to Shakespeare to Charles and Mary Lamb, whose 
graphic and discriminating " Tales from Shakespeare " have 
familiarized readers of succeeding generations with the 
principal dramas of the great master. This indebtedness 
to Lamb and his sister may well inspire a desire for a more 
intimate acquaintance with their lives and a more extended 
study of Lamb's writings. It is with the hope of increas- 
ing the regard of such as already partially know him, and 
of awakening an interest in those to whom he is a stranger, 
that the editor has prepared the present compilation from 
Lamb's "Essays." Perhaps nothing would have amused 
Lamb more than the idea of making selections from his 
works ; but it is due to him to show the many-sided qual- 
ity of his genius, as well as the conditions and circumstances 
out of which it was developed. 

It is impossible to understand Lamb's work thoroughly 
without a definite knowledge of his life and surroundings. 
No character study in English literature exceeds his in 
interest, because his life, his essays, and his letters are 
inseparably interwoven. We must acquaint ourselves with 
the incidents, some of them of a most tragic and pathetic 

6 



6 PREFACE. 

nature, that marked a life otherwise seemingly monotonous 
in its feeling ; as well as the tenderness, the patience, and 
cheerfulness which invested the comparatively humble town 
clerk with a dignity and a beauty of character that have 
given an added charm to his writings. 

Lamb's place as a critic and essayist is so firmly estab- 
lished that it seems hardly necessary to comment upon it. 
The essays in this volume have been selected with a view 
of showing him in his various moods, and displaying his 
inimitable charm, and grace of style, as well as his exquisite 
humor. More than one hundred different editions of the 
" Essays of Elia," authorized and unauthorized, have been 
issued, and the same number of " Tales from Shakespeare " ; 
while numerous reprints have been made of the "Poetry 
for Children," " Mrs. Leicester's School," " The Adventures 
of Ulysses," and many of his other productions. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Charles Lamb was born in 1775, the year of the battle 
of Lexington, in Revolutionary history ; he died in 1834. 
The fifty-nine years of his life covered a part of the reign 
of George III., that of George IV., the accession of Wil- 
liam IV., the fall of Louis XVI., the career and death of 
Napoleon Bonaparte ; and the rise . into eminence of such 
men as Fox, Burke, and Pitt. The battle of the Nile and 
the Irish Rebellion occurred when Lamb was twenty-three 
years old ; he lived to read an account of the battle of Tra- 
falgar, saw the union between Great Britain and Ireland, 
the War of 1812 ended, and survived the battle of Waterloo 
by nearly twenty years. So much for the principal histori- 
cal events that occurred during his life. 

In the world of letters also, various notable characters 
were contemporary with Lamb. Coleridge, who was his 
senior by about three years, died the same year. Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, his senior by four years, died two years earlier. 
At the time of Lamb's death, Byron had been dead ten 
years, Shelley twelve, Keats thirteen, Hazlitt four, Jane 
Austen seventeen, and Moore one. We find, therefore, 
that Lamb outlived many of his literary contemporaries, 
although a life can hardly be called complete that ter- 
minates before sixty. 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

A man is known by the friends he attracts. By this we 
do not mean mere acquaintances, but those who know and 
love him dearly. Charles Lamb had for his intimate friend, 
throughout his life, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Leigh Hunt, 
who was two years his junior at Christ's Hospital, was also 
his lifelong friend. Southey, whom he met after gradua- 
tion, was another close friend. Wordsworth, whom Lamb 
delighted in calling " an old Laker," was also an intimate, 
while William Hazlitt, Bernard Barton, B. W. Procter, and 
several others might be mentioned in this first group. 

Among his other and later friends, who, perhaps, held 
a less intimate relation with him, but were equally dear, 
were Talfourd, Crabbe Robinson, H. F. Cary, William God- 
win, John Howard Payne, Edward Moxon, and the Rev. 
Thomas Manning. It surely must be said of Lamb that 
no man of his period had more brilliant or varied associates 
than he, or friends who treasured more lovingly his mem- 
ory after he was gone. It is a significant fact, in estimat- 
ing his place in literature, that most, if not all, of his 
contemporaries, who either knew him intimately or had 
passing acquaintance with him, have left a train of loving 
reminiscences. So far as has been observed, there are only 
two discordant notes in this chorus of appreciation and 
affection; one uttered by Thomas Carlyle, and the other 
by W. C. Macready, and these arose from a misunderstand- 
ing of Lamb's character and his love of mystification and 
drollery. 

Charles Lamb was born on February 10, 1775, in the 
Crown Office Building, Middle Temple, London. His father, 
John Lamb, had come to London from Lincolnshire to seek 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

his fortune, and had married Elizabeth Field, about whom 
little is known. The result of this union was seven chil- 
dren, only three surviving infancy. These were Charles, the 
youngest; Mary, his sister, whose full name was Mary Ann; 
and his brother John, who was Charles's senior by twelve 
years. Everything points to the fact that in his childhood 
Lamb lived in obscurity and comparative poverty, although 
his father held the double position of servant and clerk to 
a lawyer named Samuel Salt. There lived with them a 
sister of his father, who seems to have held the relation of 
servant to the family. 

Before Lamb was seven years old he went to a small 
school in the neighborhood of his home, kept by one Wil- 
liam Bird. In the essay entitled "Captain Starkey," he 
has given his memories of his first school teacher, but ap- 
parently the school produced little impression upon him. 
It was not until he secured a presentation at Christ's Hos- 
pital through the influence of Samuel Salt, that his real 
intellectual development began. He entered this school 
October 9, 1782, and remained seven years; it is not too 
much to say that to this training Lamb owed nearly all that 
gave him his unique place in literature. 

This famous school, which ever remained fresh in Lamb's 
memory, was founded by Edward VI., and was exclusively 
for charity students. It exists to this day, and is familiarly 
known as the " Blue Coat School," from the fact that the 
boys wear long blue coats reaching down to their heels ; 
another curious custom being that they wear no hats, and 
have yellow knee-breeches with stockings of the same color. 

Two of Lamb's most delightful essays give, better than 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

any sketch here can, his recollections and impressions of 
this school. One called " Recollections of Christ's Hospi- 
tal " was published in his works in 1818. It was called 
forth by alleged abuses creeping into the administration of 
the school. In the second essay entitled " Christ's Hospi- 
tal Five and Thirty Years Ago," Lamb ingeniously reviewed 
himself, and commented with much humor and critical acu- 
men upon the joyous and pleasant side of his early school 
life. 

It was at Christ's Hospital that he first met Coleridge, 
and the friendship was formed which continued throughout 
life with scarcely an interruption. Coleridge remained in 
the school through Lamb's entire stay, and the two were 
thus thrown together with peculiar intimacy for seven years, 
during the important formative period of their lives. Their 
friendship is one of the most famous in literature. It would 
be difficult to over-estimate the influence it exerted, or the 
mutual inspiration gained thereby. 

Although there was a certain discipline in the school 
which seems to us severe and unnecessary, upon the whole 
Lamb's life at Christ's Hospital was a pleasant and profita- 
ble experience. He left the school in November, 1789, 
with the rank of Deputy Grecian. It should be remem- 
bered that Leigh Hunt entered the school two years after 
Lamb left, and we are indebted to him for some interesting 
memories of his friend, gathered from Lamb's associates 
and teachers. 

It seems to modern ears unusual to hear of a boy at fif- 
teen having read Virgil, Sallust, Terence, Lucian, and Xeno- 
phon, but, as a matter of fact, this was the case with both 






INTRODUCTION. 11 

Lainb and Coleridge. Furthermore, it is said that the for- 
mer was very skillful in Latin composition. It is certain 
that his knowledge and familiarity with Greek and Latin 
had much to do with the later development of his critical 
faculties as well as his inimitable style. Coleridge informs 
us that they studied together, under the direction of the 
Rev. James Boyer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Lessing. 
There is also a tradition that Coleridge was once caught, 
during play hours, reading Virgil for pleasure ! 

Three of Lamb's fellow-students at Christ's Hospital are 
often mentioned in his early letters, — two brothers named 
Le Grice and a young man named James White, known as 
the author of a little book entitled " Original Letters of 
Sir John Falstaff," — with which it is supposed that Lamb 
had some connection. 

A Grecian had to make a public oration and to enter the 
Church, but because of an impe*diment in his speech and of 
the necessity of helping to support the family, Lamb decided 
not to take orders. 

Little is known about Lamb's older brother, John, but in 
the essays entitled " Mackery End in Hertfordshire," and 
" My Relations," we have a brief picture of this brother 
who, for some reason or other, felt little or no responsibility 
for the care or support of the family. Through him, how- 
ever, Lamb secured a clerkship in the South Sea House, 
where John was already employed. Here Charles worked 
for about a year, and thirty years afterward gave us his 
recollections and experiences in his essay entitled "The 
South Sea House." 

It was through his first benefactor and his father's good 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

friend, Samuel Salt, that Lamb obtained a clerkship in the 
East India House, of which Mr. Salt was a governor. This 
seems to have been the last of his many kindnesses to the 
Lamb family. Lamb occupied this clerkship for thirty- 
three years, at a salary beginning with seventy pounds per 
annum, a pension being granted him upon his retirement. 

It was in September, 1796, when Lamb was twenty-one 
years old, that the great tragedy of his life occurred. The 
family were then living in Little Queen Street, Holborn. 
From their father both Charles and Mary Lamb inherited 
a taint of insanity to which Charles had succumbed for 
a brief period in the winter of 1795-6. It is not definitely 
known whether this was owing to an unfortunate love af- 
fair, or whether the strain of his domestic responsibilities was 
too much for him, but Lamb himself, in writing to Coleridge, 
states that he spent six weeks in a madhouse at Hoxton. 

The income of the family was at this time at a very low 
ebb; Mary was doing needlework to help in its support, 
and it was thought that overwork unbalanced her mind. 
One day in September, the maidservant for some reason 
seeming to have excited her displeasure, Mary seized a 
knife and chased the girl around the room; Mrs. Lamb 
interfered in the servant's behalf, when Mary turned upon 
her and plunged the knife in her mother's heart. Charles 
wrenched the knife from her, but not before she had in- 
flicted a slight wound upon her father. The following 
pathetic letter from Lamb to Coleridge explains clearly his 
condition of mind at the time : — 

" My Dearest Friend : — White, or some of my friends, 
or the public papers, by this time have informed you of the 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

terrible calamity that has fallen on onr family. I will only 
give you the outlines. My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit 
of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was 
at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her 
grasp. She is at present in a madhouse from whence I 
fear she must be moved to a hospital. God has preserved 
to me my senses ; I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have 
my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was 
slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my 
aunt. Mr. N orris, of the Blue Coat School, has been very, 
very kind to us, and we have no other friend ; but, thank 
God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best 
that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, 
but no mention of what is gone and done with. With me, 
' The former things are passed away,' and I have something 
more to do than to feel. God Almighty have us all in His 

kee l jin ^ ! "C.Lamb. 

"Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every 
vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please, 
but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without 
name or initial, and never send me a book, I charge you. 

" Your own judgment will convince you not to take any 
notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look after your 
family; I have reason and strength left to take care of 
mine. I charge you, don't think of coming to see me. 
Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty 
love you and all of us. a p j „ 

At the Coroner's inquest held over the body of Mrs. 
Lamb, the deed was pronounced an act of insanity. Lamb 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

was appointed by the Court to be the official guardian of 
Mary, upon his promise to the civil authorities to become 
responsible for her actions, and all the world ought to 
know what sacrifices he made, what devotion he displayed, 
throughout the rest of his life. It is unparalleled in the 
history of literature, and all honor should be given to the 
noble and self-sacrificing task which was so purely self- 
imposed. Mrs. Lamb was buried on the twenty-sixth of 
the month, and Charles and his father, the latter now 
nearly eighty years of age, removed to Pentonville ; Mary 
in the meantime being sent to the Asylum at Hoxton. 
Her attacks of mania, of which she was painfully con- 
scious, occurred at more or less frequent intervals through- 
out the rest of her life, and she was obliged to be taken 
away upon their recurrence. During the intervening peri- 
ods she was perfectly sane, and remained quietly at home 
with Charles, even assisting him in his literary work. A 
scene described by a friend (Procter), wherein he speaks 
of seeing Lamb, carrying Mary's strait- jacket, walking 
across the fields with her on her way to the asylum, both 
being in tears, gives a glimpse of the distress of the brother 
and sister at one of Mary's periodical attacks. 

In 1797 Lamb formed acquaintance with two persons 
who influenced his later career very decidedly. These were 
Wordsworth and Southey. A year earlier Coleridge had 
published a volume of poems, in which he included four 
sonnets by " Mr. Lamb, of the India House." These may 
be considered Lamb's first contributions to literature. In 
1798 Coleridge repeated the experiment, and published 
through his friend, Joseph Cottle of Bristol, a book entitled 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

"Poems by S. T. Coleridge, to which are now added 
Poems by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb." 

It was not, however, until 1799 that Lamb's powers 
seemed fairly to awaken and to take more definite form. 
This year he published a little story entitled " The Tale of 
Kosamond Gray and Old Blind Margaret," a quaint Eliza- 
bethan tale, partly autobiographical. The volume was 
issued while Coleridge and Wordsworth were abroad, and 
Lamb was obliged to lean upon Southey as his intellectual 
guide, philosopher, and friend. It was a slight tale with a 
melodramatic plot, but there are passages in it of extraor- 
dinary beauty. The story turns upon the sorrows of a 
girl who falls in love with a lord, in the true style of the 
eighteenth century novelist. The book attracted little com- 
ment from the critics of the day, but it is worth our study 
in order to estimate and appreciate Lamb's belief in, and 
tenderness for, women. 

In the early letters to Coleridge and Southey one can 
notice with delight the embryo critic and essayist, and can 
watch the humorist developing his powers. 

In 1799 Coleridge returned from abroad, and Lamb re- 
newed his intimate intercourse with him. At this period, 
in writing to one of his friends, Lamb refers to the fact 
that as a family they were marked, — which, of course, 
means that Mary's occasional insanity became known in 
every neighborhood where she appeared, thus necessitating 
frequent change of residence. We find them, in May, 1800, 
removing to temporary quarters in the Southampton Build- 
ings, in London, offered by his friend, J. M. Gutch. For 
some reason this arrangement did not last very long, for on 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

Lady Day, 1801, they removed to lodgings in their old 
surroundings in the Temple, Mitre Court Buildings, where 
Lamb could once more breathe the atmosphere of his child- 
hood, and be protected to a large extent from curious and 
inquisitive eyes. Here he lived for nine long and trying 
years, producing much of his best-known work. 

In 1801, on one of his visits to Cambridge, Lamb was 
introduced by Charles Lloyd, his early associate in litera- 
ture, to the Rev. Thomas Manning, who was destined to 
call forth some of his best and wittiest letters. There was 
a sympathy between them, though it was the sympathy of 
difference. The clergyman, subsequently going as a mis- 
sionary to China, Lamb wrote him while there a series of 
letters by which literature has been greatly enriched. 

At this period the Lambs were very poor, and Charles 
was obliged to supplement his income in some way. He 
did so by securing more or less steady work on a morning 
newspaper, largely devoted to politics, entitled TJie Morn- 
ing Post. The editor, Dan Stuart, secured Lamb to write 
political squibs and paragraphs. In his essay entitled 
"Newspapers Five and Thirty Years Ago," he records 
some of his newspaper experiences. He worked also on a 
short-lived paper called TJie Albion, edited by a certain 
John Fenwick, but no great sum was added to his income, 
while the work must have been far from agreeable. 

While looking for the means of making some additional 
money, Lamb tried his hand at writing for the stage. He 
wrote a play entitled " Pride's Cure," which was afterward 
changed to the less mysterious name of " John Woodvil." 
This was offered to Kemble, then the proprietor of the 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

Drury Lane Theater, who promptly rejected it. Nothing 
daunted, Lamb published the play in 1802, four years after 
the appearance of his little tale of " Rosamond Gray." 
The play is a slight one, and one must agree with Kemble's 
judgment of it, although, as in the case of Lamb's first 
effort, there is a certain kind of Elizabethan aroma about it. 

In the summer of this year, Lamb and his sister spent 
their brief holiday with Coleridge at Keswick, which subse- 
quently became so famous as the residence of both Cole- 
ridge and Southey. 

Lamb's friends at this time — those who were most in- 
spiring to him — were living out of London, and although 
the world is richer for this because of the interesting let- 
ters written, there can be no doubt that their absence was a 
cause of regret and sorrow to him. 

No publication of importance was issued by Lamb during 
the succeeding four years, but in 1806 his farce entitled 

" Mr. H " was accepted by the proprietor of the Drury 

Lane Theater, and played by Elliston. Crabbe Eobinson 
was present at the production of this play, which proved a 
dismal failure. It is recorded that Lamb himself hissed 
the play when he saw it actually produced ; his critical 
faculties overbalancing his personal interest. In 1805 
he made the acquaintance of William Hazlitt, who was a 
great stimulus to his already well-developed literary produc- 
tiveness. Through Hazlitt he was introduced to William 
Godwin, and for Godwin he did, in 1807, two small, thin, 
16mo volumes, modestly attired and almost unheralded, 
entitled, " Tales from Shakespeare," in which he was as- 
sisted by his sister Mary. For the writing of these tales 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

they received sixty pounds. In the following year a 
tale for children, entitled " The Adventures of Ulysses," 
was produced, and brought a small addition to their 
income. 

The year 1808 marks the first really great work that 
Lamb did, and it was destined to put him in the foremost 
rank of living critics. There was, in the British Museum, 
a large collection of plays, the gift of David Garrick. From 
these Lamb had planned a volume entitled " Specimens of 
Dramatic Poets about the Time of Shakespeare," and to 
him must be given the honor of having introduced afresh 
to the British public most of these old dramatists. Instead 
of making small extracts from these plays, such as Dodd's 
" Beauties of Shakespeare," and the numerous anthologies 
of the period, he elected to produce whole scenes, or long 
passages sufficiently varied to illustrate some particular 
phase of dramatic construction. To these he added brief 
and discriminating notes. Indeed, one might say that his 
criticisms often took the form of the study of human life. 
In claiming for Lamb the position of the first to revive the 
study of, and arouse an interest in, the old dramatists, we 
must not forget that this book antedated Coleridge's " Lec- 
tures on Shakespeare," the writings of Hazlitt, John Payne 
Collier, and the Eev. Alexander Dyce. Besides the well- 
known dramatists drawn upon, such as Marlowe, Jonson, 
Chapman, Heywood, Beaumont, Middleton, Shirley, and 
Webster, Lamb had extracted honey from lesser known 
flowers, as Sackville, Norton, Kyd, Daniel, Taylor, Brewer, 
Rowley, and others, thus showing his wide reading and 
wider knowledge. 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

Already his circle of friends and acquaintances was in- 
creasing, and many of his contemporaries tell delightful 
stories of his entertainments as well as of his wit and hu- 
mor. In 1809, with his sister, he published a little volume 
of children's stories, issued from the establishment of Wil- 
liam Godwin, entitled "Mrs Leicester's School," intended 
to be a proper book for the young ladies of the period to 
read; and two slender volumes called "Poetry for Chil- 
dren," largely written by Mary Lamb. Neither of these 
books have ever had the popularity of " Tales from Shakes- 
peare," but both display a literary touch and knowledge of 
child nature. There is little on record during the next 
nine years except the quiet of home life, and the asso- 
ciation with friends, who increased in number and variety ; 
but they were years of comparatively great joy and pleas- 
ure. 

In 1818, at the suggestion of the publishers, C. and J. 
Oilier, Lamb's works were collected in book form, which 
added decidedly to his literary reputation. In January, 
1820, Messrs. Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy started a new 
magazine, entitled The London Magazine, which had for 
its editor John Scott, the former editor of The Champion. 
This was subsequently sold to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. 
Lamb contributed to the August number, and from then 
until December, 1822, few numbers appeared without the 
well-known signature of " Elia." His essays were twenty- 
eight in all, and ranged in topics from "The South Sea 
House " to " The Praise of Chimney Sweepers." A few of 
these essays had appeared in other magazines, notably, 
the one entitled "On the Behavior of Married People," 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

which was published originally in 1811, in Leigh Hunt's 
Reflector; and "Valentine's Day," in Leigh Hunt's Indi- 
cator; while the two entitled "On Some of the Old Actors" 
and " The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century " had 
appeared in The London Magazine under the title of "The 
Old Actors." 

It must be acknowledged by all students of Lamb's work 
that he did not find his true place in literature until he 
commenced this inimitable series, destined to call forth his 
best powers. It is difficult to characterize these essays, for 
they are partly autobiographical, partly humorous, filled 
with a certain quaint knowledge, and permeated with a 
sweet, good-natured outlook on life which gives them a 
unique place in literature. 

One thing is certain ; the critics of the day recognized 
that Lamb was a writer of the purest, best, and most genu- 
ine English of his time. He had been so faithful a student 
of the dramatists and poets of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries that it is not to be wondered at that many 
forms of expression and uses of words which were con- 
sidered obsolete in his day are revived in these essays. He 
was indebted, perhaps insensibly, to Sir Thomas Browne, to 
Burton, and to Andrew Marvel, while he drank deep from 
such sources as Shakespeare and Milton, whom he is said 
to have almost known by heart. He also was intimately 
familiar with Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, 
and Webster. We can scarcely read these essays of Elia 
without noting how rich they are in quaint fancy and 
dainty grace of expression. Quotations, Latin and Greek 
similes, seem to have slipped from his pen as readily as 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

if they came from the bottle of ink which he used. 
There is a buoyancy and brilliancy about them which 
might be considered the product of off-hand spontaneity, 
but as a matter of fact, Lamb was extremely painstaking 
and fastidious about everything he did. He had his mor- 
alizing humor, his metaphysical attitude, his serene view 
of life, as well as a frolicsome spirit which is most difficult 
to imitate. Altogether, the essays amply reward the most 
careful study. 

The success of the first series was so great, in magazine 
form, that in 1823 Messrs. Taylor and Hessey induced 
Lamb to publish them in a volume, and this was followed, 
in 1833, by a second series numbering twenty-three so-called 
essays, and sixteen popular fallacies. Sixteen of these 
appeared in The London Magazine, three in The English- 
man's Magazine, three in The Neiv Monthly Magazine, and 
one in The Athenceum; while all the "Popular Fallacies" 
appeared in The New Monthly Magazine between the months 
of January and September, 1826. 

We take up again the story of Lamb's life from the year 
1810. At this time he moved into lodgings at 4 Inner 
Temple Lane, and there was besieged, one might say, by 
his friends. The following eight years are considered by 
his biographers as the happiest of his life. His salary 
received at the East India House was increasing; his cir- 
cle of friends was widening (including among others Haz- 
litt, Crabbe Robinson, and Procter), and his position as a 
critic and essayist was becoming more and more firmly 
established. 

In 1817, the year before the publication of his works in 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

two volumes, Lamb removed to lodgings in Great Russell 
Street, Covent Garden. 

In August, 1823, the same year that the first volume of 
the " Essays of Elia " appeared, he and Mary moved into a 
cottage in what was known as Colebrook Row, Islington, 
making this their home for four years. Lamb had now 
been in the service of the East India House for thirty-three 
years, and was surprised in March, 1825, to be informed by 
the directors of the Company that he had been granted a 
pension of four hundred and forty-one pounds, for the 
remainder of his life. He at once sat down and embodied 
his thoughts and feelings in one of his best-known essays, 
entitled " The Superannuated Man," which is almost en- 
tirely autobiographical. 

It was not thought by his critics that this liberty, which 
he had longed so much for, was the very best for him, as of 
all men he needed the discipline of regular and mechanical 
work. In 1827 he took lodgings with a Mrs. Leishman, 
at " The Chace," Enfield, where he and Mary ultimately 
became sole tenants. 

The London Magazine died a slow death in 1826, and 
with it ended the " Essays of Elia." Lamb's literary work 
was over; he added little to it in the subsequent eight 
years, except to publish in book form the last " Essays of 
Elia," and a volume entitled "Album Verses," published 
in 1830 by his friend Edward Moxon. The loss of a 
servant and Mary's repeated illnesses made them decide 
to give up housekeeping and board next door, — as Lamb 
put it, "forty -two inches nearer London." In 1833 they 
moved once more, this time to Edmonton, and boarded 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

with a Mr. and Mrs. Walden, at Bay Cottage, not far from 
Enfield. 

There is little more to record about Lamb's last years. 
One day in December, 1834, while taking a walk, he struck 
his foot against a stone and fell, inflicting a slight wound 
on his face. At first the injury seemed insignificant, but 
later on it developed into erysipelas. From this disease 
he died on the 27th of December, and was buried in the 
Edmonton church-yard. Mary was away from home at the 
time, in one of her periodical attacks of insanity. 

After Lamb's death it was discovered from his accounts 
how generous he had been to others ; thus, for many years 
he had been paying thirty pounds a year to an old school- 
mistress ; to a friend of Southey's, a paralytic, ten pounds ; 
when his friend William Godwin was in financial trouble 
he subscribed fifty pounds for a fund to relieve him. This 
generosity may seem unwise for a man of Lamb's income, 
but by dint of saving he had laid aside enough to provide 
for Mary after his death, not knowing that the East India 
House intended continuing the payment to her of his 
annuity. 

Thirteen years after Lamb's death Mary died at the 
advanced age of eighty-two, having spent most of the time 
with a private nurse in St. John's Wood, London. 

The story of Charles and Mary Lamb forms one of the 
most unselfish records in all literature of the devotion of a 
brother to an invalid sister. 

In studying Lamb's works, we must consider, not only 
the circumstances and conditions of his life, but his envi- 
ronment. Almost his entire life was passed in the city of 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

London with only occasional visits to the country or sea- 
shore, and a single brief trip to Paris. London supplied 
him with his richest materials. People, rather than "rocks 
and trees," satisfied his imagination. Prom human society 
and human activity he drew an inspiration as true, as pro- 
found, as delicate, as refined, as ever was that which 
"Wordsworth drew from Nature and her great forces. 

When removed from this human environment, he longed 
to return to it. His sense of locality was most strongly 
developed; he loved familiar scenes and faces. He had 
no especial interest in the new and strange, yet he was 
quite alive to new impressions and sensations. His sense 
of humor illuminated the everyday walks of life ; his quick 
sympathy and ready charity were easily aroused. 

Pew men have gained so much from both books and peo- 
ple as did Charles Lamb. He passionately loved reading ; 
he loved people more. He loved solitude ; he loved com- 
panionship. He enjoyed in a childlike manner a walk 
across the fields at Edmonton ; he reveled in the theater. 
He never seemed to care for the rich, the nobility, for 
social functions, or for money. He is said to have wept at 
a wedding and laughed at a funeral. His nature was so 
whimsical that he usually showed his most trivial side to 
strangers, particularly if he felt them unfriendly, or knew 
they disapproved of him or his ways. He played jokes 
upon the public and his friends alike, and never seemed 
happier than w r hen committing some extravagance either in 
thought or action. 

His learning was great, but it stimulated rather than 
restrained his fancy. He was a paradox to himself, and 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

no less to his friends. He delighted in humbugging his 
sister, but was prepared to lay down his life for her. 

Lamb has been fortunate in his editors, the first one of 
note being his friend, Sergeant Talfourd, who, in 1837, col- 
lected his letters and wrote his memoir. This was fol- 
lowed, in 1848, by two volumes entitled " Final Memorials, 
or Lamb fully Known." Since that time, J. E. Babson in 
this country, W. Carew Hazlitt (a grandson of Lamb's old 
friend), Charles Kent, and Percy Fitzgerald have contributed 
to our knowledge of Lamb. To Canon Alfred Ainger we 
are indebted, however, in a more than usual degree. His 
painstaking researches, his discriminating judgment, his 
literary skill, have enabled us to see Lamb as we see few, 
if any, of his contemporaries. The late J. Dykes Campbell 
was a careful student of the Lake School, and a faithful 
delver in all matters relating to Lamb and his friends,, and 
his writings have thrown much important light on the 
period. 

Since the publication of the " Final Memorials " until the 
present time, a period of more than half a century, Lamb 
and his writings, the incidents of his life, his topographical 
surroundings, his peculiarities and vagaries as noted by his 
friends, have been favorite topics for literary and antiqua- 
rian research. During the last year, two new books, each 
containing some unpublished matter, have been issued, 
while the reissues of Lamb's works in various editions have 
been numerous. The most important of the newer con- 
tributions to our knowledge is a book edited by A. V. 
Lucas, entitled "Charles Lamb and the Lloyds," which 
throws some new light on his earlier career and friend- 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

ships. It is, however, from Lamb himself that we obtain 
most of the facts relating to his life, and we can form a 
quite accurate judgment of what manner of man he was 
from his " Letters," of which we now have, thanks to the 
industry of Canon Ainger, three times the number given 
to the world by Talfourd. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CHIEF EVENTS 
IN LAMB'S LIFE. 



Date. 


Age. 


Ciiief Events in the Life of Charles Lamb. 


Eesidence. 


1775 


Born 




Crown Office Row, 


1782 


7 


Enters Christ's Hospital, London. 
Clerk in South Sea House. 


Temple, London. 


1792 


17 


Enters service East India House. 




1794 


19 


Contributes sonnet " As when a child on 
some long winter's night " to Morning 
Chronicle. 




1795 


20 




Resides at No. 7 


1796 


21 


Contributes The Grandame to Charles 


Little Queen St., 






Lloyd's Poems on the Death ofPriscilla 


London. 






Farmer. 








Contributes four sonnets to Poems by 








S. T. Coleridge. 




1797 


22 


Contributes to Poems by S. T. Coleridge, 


Removes to 45 






to which are now added Poems by 


Chapel St., Pen- 






Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. 


tonville. 


1798 


23 


Publishes A Tale of Rosamund Gray and 
Old Blind Margaret, and Blank Verse 
by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb. 




1799 


24 


Contributes Living without God in the 
World, to Cottle's Annual Anthology . 




1800 


25 


Writes Epilogue to Godwin's Antonio. 


Southampton 
Buildings, Lon- 
don. 


1801 


26 




Removes to 16 


1802 


27 


Publishes John Woodvil. 


Mitre-Court 


1800 


31 


Mr. II—, a farce, is produced at Drury 


Buildings, Tem- 






Lane Theater. 


ple, London. 


1807 


32 


Publishes his Tales from Shakespearean 
collaboration with his sister. 

Writes Prologue to Godwin's Faulkener 
and Epilogue to Time's a Tell-Tale, by 
Henry Siddons. 




1808 


33 


Publishes Specimens of English Dra- 
matic Poets, and The Adventures of 
Ulysses. 




1809 


34 


Publishes Poetry for Children. 2 vols. 


Removes to No. 4 






Mrs. Leicester's School, both in collab- 


Inner Temple 






oration with his sister. 


Lane, London. 



27 



28 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Date. 


Age. 


Chief Events in the Life of Charles Lamb. 


Residence. 


1811 


36 


Publishes Prince Doras, and contributes 
A Farewell to Tobacco to Hunt's Re- 
flector. 




1813 


38 


Writes Prologue to Coleridge's Remorse, 
a Tragedy. 




1814 


39 


Contributes Confessions of a Drunkard 
to Montagu's Some Enquiries into the 
Effects of Fermented Liquors. 




1817 


42 




Removes to No. 20 


1818 


43 


Collected Works published by C. and J. 


Russell St., Co- 






Oilier, dedicated to Coleridge. 


vent Garden, 


1820 


45 


Begins contribution of Elia Essays to 
The London Magazine. 


London. 


1823 


48 


Elia Essays, first series published by 


Removes to Cole- 






Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. 


brooke Row, Is- 


1825 


50 


Retires from East India House on a 
pension of £400. Contributes articles 
to Hone's Every -day Book. 


lington, London. 


182G 


51 


Contributes articles to Hone's Every-day 


Removes to En- 






Book. 


field, and boards 
in" The Manse" 
with Mr. and 


1827 


52 


Contributes Introduction to Garrick 
Plays in Hone's Table Book. 


Mrs. Leishman. 


1829 


53 




Lodges at Enfield 
with Mr. and 
Mrs. Thomas 
West wood, "for- 
ty-two inches 


1830 


55 


Publishes Album Verses ; contributes 


nearer town." 






Essay on De Foe to Wilson's Memoirs 


Lamb lived 






of Daniel De Foe. 


here three 


1831 


56 


Publishes Satan in Search of a Wife. 


years. 


1832 


57 




Removes to Bay 
Cottage, Edmon- 


1833 


58 


Publishes Last Essays of Elia ; contrib- 


ton, boarding 






utes Epilogue to J. S. Knowles's The 


with Mr. and 






Wife. 


Mrs. Walden. 


1834 


59 


Dies, December 27, at Edmonton. 


Buried in Edmon- 
ton church. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHIEF AUTHORITIES. 

Ainger (Alfred), Charles Lamb. 16mo. London, 1888. 

Ainger (Alfred), The Letters of Charles Lamb, with Introductions and 
Notes. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1888. 

Allsop (Thomas), Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. 
Coleridge. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1836. 

Babson (J. E.), Eliana, being the hitherto uncollected writings of 
Charles Lamb. 12mo. Boston, 1865. 

Clarke (Charles and Mary Cowden) , Becollections of Writers. 12mo. 
London, 1878. 

Clarke (Mrs. Charles Cowden), My Beminiscences. 12mo. London, 
1897. 

Cottle (Joseph), Early Recollections ; chiefly relating to the late S. T. 
Coleridge, etc., Portraits. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1837. 

Daniel (George), Love's Labour Lost. 12mo. London, 1863. 

De Quincey (Thomas), Biographical Essays. 12ino. London, 1851. 

De Quincey (Thomas), Literary Beminiscences. 12mo. London, 1851. 

De Quincey (Thomas), Leaders in Literature, etc. 12mo. Edin- 
burgh, 1862. 

Fitzgerald (Percy), Charles Lamb, his Friends, his Haunts, and his 
Books. London, 1866. 

Gilchrist (Mrs. Anne), Mary Lamb (Famous Women Series). 16mo. 
London, 1883. 

Hazlitt (W. Carew), Mary and Charles Lamb, Poems, Letters, and 
Bemains. London, 1874. 

Hazlitt (W. Carew), The Lambs. 12mo. London, 1898. 

Hunt (Leigh), Autobiography, with Beminiscences of Friends and 
Contemporaries. 3 vols. London, 1850. 

Lucas (E. V.), Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. 12mo. London, 1898. 

Martin (B. E.), In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, with a Bibliogra- 
phy by Ernest Dressel North. Square 8vo. New York, 1894. 

Matthews (Charles), Life and Correspondence, edited by his widow. 
4 vols. London, 1838. 

Patmore (P. G.), My Friends and Acquaintances. 4 vols. London, 
1884. 

Procter (B. W.), Charles Lamb, a Memoir. 8vo. London, 1868. 

Robinson (Henry Crabbe), Dairy, Beminiscences, and Correspon- 
dence, etc., edited by Thomas Sadler. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1866. 
29 



30 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Sanford (Mrs.), Thomas Poole and his Friends. 2 vols. 12mo. 

London, 1888. 
Southey (Robert), Life and Correspondence. 6 vols. London, 1850. 
Talfourd (T. K), The Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his 

Life. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1837. 
Talfourd (T. N.), The Final Memorials of Charles Lamb. 2 vols. 

12mo. London, 1848. 
"Wordsworth (William), Life, by William Knight. 3 vols. 8vo. 

London, 1889. 



ESSAYS OF CHAELES LAMB. 
I. 

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

Sera tamen respexit. 
Libertas. 

— Virgil. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefe. 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the 
golden years of thy life, thy shining youth, in the irksome 
confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days prolonged 
through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, 
without hope of release or respite ; to have lived to forget 5 
that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them 
but as the prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, 
will you be able to appreciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the 
desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transition at 10 
fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the frequently 
intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and 
sometimes ten hours a-day attendance at the counting-house. 
But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually 
became content; doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages. 15 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, 
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of wor- 
ship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for 
days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is 
a gloom for me attendant upon a City Sunday, a weight in 20 

31 



32 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, 
and the ballad-singers, the buzz and stirring murmur of the 
streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops 
repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless- 

5 succession of knacks and gew-gaws, and ostentatiously dis- 
played wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day saunter 
through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful, 
are shut out. No book-stalls deliriously to idle over; no 
busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them 

10 ever passing by, — the very face of business a charm by 
contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to 
be seen but unhappy countenances — or half-happy at best 
— of emancipated 'prentices and little tradesfolk, with here 
and there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, 

15 slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the 
capacity of enjoying a free hour, and livelily expressing the 
hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in 
the fields on that day look anything but comfortable. 

But besides Sundays, I had a day at Easter and a day at 

20 Christmas, with a full week in the Summer to go and air 
myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was 
a great indulgence ; and the prospect of its recurrence, I 
believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my 
durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did the 

25 glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me ? 
or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in 
restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find 
out how to make the most of them ? Where was the quiet ? 
where the promised rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it was 

30 vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty- 
one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another 
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw 
something of an illumination upon the darker side of my 
captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have 

35 sustained my thraldom. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 33 

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever 
been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of inca- 
pacity for business. This, during my latter years, had in- 
creased to such a degree that it was visible in all the lines of 
my countenance. My health and my good spirits nagged. 5 
I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I should 
be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served 
over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with 
terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, 
and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of 10 
emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as 
it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon 
the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know 
that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, 15 
on the fifth of last month, a day ever to be remembered by 

me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling me on 

one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly 
inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made 
confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid 1 20 
should eventually be obliged to resign his service. He 
spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there the 
matter rested. A whole week I remained labouring under 
the impression that I had acted imprudently in my dis- 
closure ; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, 25 
and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week 
passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, 
in my whole life, when on the evening of the 12th of April, 
just as I was about quitting my desk to go home, (it might 
be about eight o'clock,) I received an awful summons to 30 
attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the for- 
midable back parlour. I thought now my time was surely 
come. I have done for myself. I am going to be told that 

they have no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, 

smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to 35 



34 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

me, — when to my utter astonishment B , the eldest 

partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of my 
services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of 
the time, (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that ? 

5 1 protest I never had the confidence to think as much). lie 
went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a cer- 
tain time of life, (how my heart panted!) and asking me 
a few questions as to the amount of my own property, of 
which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his 

10 three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept 
from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for 
life to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary, — 
a magnificent offer ! I do not know what I answered be- 
tween surprise and gratitude, but it was understood that I 

15 accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free from 
that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow, 
and at just ten minutes after eight I went home — forever. 
This noble benefit (gratitude forbids me to conceal their 
names) I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm 

20 in the world, — the house of Boldero, Merry weather, Bosan- 

quet, and Lacy. 

Esto perpetua ! 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused 

25 to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was 
happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition 
of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a 
forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with 
myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity, for 

30 it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to 
himself. It seemed to me that I had more Time on my 
hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor 
in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I 
could see no end of my possessions : I wanted some steward, 

35 or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 35 

And here let me caution persons grown old in active busi- 
ness, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, 
to forego their customary employment all at once, for there 
may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that 
my resources are sufficient ; and now that those first giddy 5 
raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home feeling of the 
blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having 
all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung 
heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk all 
day long, as I used to do in those transient holidays, thirty 10 
miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were 
troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do not read in that 
violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but 
candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight 
in by-gone Winters. I walk, read, or scribble, (as now,) just 15 
when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; 
I let it come to me. I am like the man 

that's born, and has his years come to him, 



In some green desert. 

" Years ! " you will say ; " what is that superannuated sim- 20 
pleton calculating upon ? He has already told us he is past 
fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years ; but deduct out 
of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and 
not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow : 25 
for that is the only true Time which a man can properly 
call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, 
though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other 
people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long 
or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. My ten 30 
next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any pre- 
ceeding thirty. 'Tis a fair Eule-of-Three sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the com- 
mencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not 



36 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened 
since I quitted the Counting House. I could not conceive 
of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners and the clerks, 
with whom I had for so many years and for so many hours 
5 in each day of the year been closely associated, being sud- 
denly removed from them, they seemed as dead to me. 
There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this 
fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a 
friend's death : — 

10 'Twas but just now he went away ; 

I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me ! 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

15 To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go 
among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-fel- 
lows — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left below 
in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which they 
received me could quite restore to me that pleasant famil- 

20iarity which I had hitherto enjoyed among them. We 
cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went 
off but faintly. My old desk, the peg where I hung my 
hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but 
I could not take it kindly. D 1 take me, if I did not 

25 feel some remorse — beast, if I had not — at quitting my 
old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six-and- 
thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and 
conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had 
it been so rugged then, after all ? or was I simply a coward ? 

30 Well, it is too late to repent; and I also know that these 
suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occa- 
sions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken 
the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I 
shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the sepa- 

35 ration. Farewell, old cronies ; yet not for long, for again 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 3 < 

and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. 

Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do , 

mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to 

do and to volunteer good services ! — and thou, thou dreary 
pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, 5 
stately house of Merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, 
and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one- 
half the year supplied the place of the sun's light; un- 
healthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, 
farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection 10 
of some wandering bookseller, my " works ! " There let 
them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy 
shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full 
as useful ! My mantle I bequeathe among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first commu- 15 
nication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, 
but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it 
was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was 
left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak 
eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains, for- 20 
sooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my 
apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular dis- 
cipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the 
world. I am now as if I had never been other than my 
own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to 25 
do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the 
day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have been 
sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I digress 
into Soho, to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been 
thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new 30 
in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the morning. 
Was it ever otherwise ? What is become of Fish Street 
Hill ? Where is Fenchurch Street ? Stones of old Minc- 
ing Lane, which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for 



38 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk 
are your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer 
flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am strangely 
among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- 

stured to compare the change in my condition to a passing 
into another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. 
I have lost all distinction of season. I do not know the 
day of the week or of the month. Each day used to be in- 
dividually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post 

10 days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next San- 
day. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' 
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly 
during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. 
The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to f oi- 
ls low, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What 
charm has washed that Ethiop white ? What is gone of 
Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself — 
that unfortunate failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, 
what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get 

20 the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it — is melted down 
into a week-day. I can spare time to go to church now, 
without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem 
to cut out of the holiday. I have time for everything. I 
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much 

25 occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him with 
an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor 
this fine May morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold 
the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, 
carking and caring ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in 

30 the same eternal round : and what is it all for ? A man 
can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to 
do. Had I a little son, I would christen him jSTothing-to- 
do ; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of 
his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for 

35 the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 39 

and swallow up those accursed cotton mills ? Take me that 
lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer * * * # * *, clerk to the Firm of, &c. I am 
lietired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I 5 
am already come to be known by my vacant face and care- 
less gesture, perambulating to no fixed place, nor with any 
settled purpose. I walk about ; not to and from. They tell 
me a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long 
with my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my 10 
person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take tip 
a newspaper it is to read the state of the opera. Opus 
operation est. I have done all that I came into this world to 
do. I have worked task-work, and have the rest of the day 
to myself. 15 



II. 

DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when 
they were children ; to stretch their imagination to the con- 
ception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandarae, whom 
they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones 
5 crept about me the other evening to hear about their great- 
grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a 
hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa 
lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was gener- 
ally believed in that part of the country — of the tragic in- 

10 cidents which they had lately become familiar with from the 
ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the 
whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be 
seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of 
the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Red- 

15 breasts ; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a 
marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story 
upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, 
too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, 
how religious and how good their great-grandmother Eield 

20 was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she 
was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had 
only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might 
be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the 
owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable 

25 mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoin- 
ing county ; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had 
been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in 
a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and 
was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped 

40 



DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 41 

and carried away to the owner's other house, where they 
were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to 
carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, 
and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. 
Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be fool- 5 
ish, indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, 
her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and 
some of the gentry, too, of the neighbourhood for many miles 
round, to show their respect for her memory, because she 
had been such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed 10 
that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part 
of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her 
hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person 
their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her 
youth she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little 15 
right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my 
looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, 
in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and 
bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her 
good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, 20 
because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she 
was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great 
lone house ; and how she believed that an apparition of two 
infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the 
great staircase near where she slept, but she said "those 25 
innocents would do her no harm ; " and how frightened I 
used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep 
with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she 
— and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded 
all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told 30 
how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the 
great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to 
spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts 
of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till 
the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be 35 



42 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

turned into marble with them ; how I never could be tired 
with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty 
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, 
and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed 
5 out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, 
which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a 
solitary gardening man would cross me — and how the nec- 
tarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever 
offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, 
10 unless now and then, — and because I had more pleasure in 
strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, 
or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, 
which were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying 
about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells 
15 around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost 
fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace 
that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the 
garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging mid- 
20 way down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their 
impertinent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy- 
idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of children. 
Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of 
25 grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated 
dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish 
them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a 
more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grand- 
mother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial 

30 manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L , 

because he was so handsome and spirited a }^outh, and a 
king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in 
solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most 
mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger 
35 than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county 



A REVERIE. 43 

in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out 
— and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but 
had too much spirit to be always pent up within their 
boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to man's estate 
as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of every- 5 
body, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially ; 
and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a 
lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit older than me — 
many a mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in 
after life he became lame- footed too, and I did not always 10 
(I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was im- 
patient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how consider- 
ate he had been to me when I was lame-footed ; and how 
when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it 
seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance 15 
there is betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his death 
as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted 
and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to 
heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I 
had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till 20 
then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, 
and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive 
again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled some- 
times), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy 
without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been when 25 
the doctor took off his limb. — Here the children fell a-cry- 
ing, and asked if their little mourning which they had 
on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed 
me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some 
stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how 30 
for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in de- 
spair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n ; 

and as much as children could understand, I explained to 
them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in 
maidens — when suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the 35 



44 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re- 
presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood 
there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I 
stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to 

5 my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last 
but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost dis- 
tance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me 
the effects of speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor 
are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum 

10 father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. 
We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the 
tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have ex- 
istence, and a name " — and immediately awaking, I found 
myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had 

15 fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my 
side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever. 



III. 

OLD CHINA. 

I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When 
I go to see any great house I inquire for the china closet, 
and next for the picture gallery. I cannot defend the order 
of preference but by saying that we have all some taste or 
other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering 5 
distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind 
the first play and the first exhibition that I w T as taken to ; 
but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and sau- 
cers were introduced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance then (why should I now have?) to 10 
those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under 
the notion of men and women float about, uncircumscribed 
by any element, in that world before perspective — a china 
tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot 15 
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our 
optics), yet on terra firma still, for so we must in courtesy 
interpret that speck of deeper blue which the decorous ar- 
tist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath 
their sandals. 20 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if 
possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a 
lady from a salver, two miles off. See how distance seems 
to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or another, (for 25 
likeness is identity on tea-cups,) is stepping into a little 
fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden 
river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle 
of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly 

45 



46 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

land her in the midst of a flowery mead a furlong off on 
the other side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their 
world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 
5 Here a cow and rabbit couchant and co-extensive ; so 
objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine 
Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our 
Hyson, (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed 

10 still of an afternoon,) some of these speciosa miracula upon 
a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) 
which we were now for the first time using ; and could not 
help remarking how favourable circumstances had been to 
us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye some- 

15 times with trifles of this sort, when a passing sentiment 
seemed to over shade the brows of my companion. I am 
quick at detecting these Summer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come again," she said, 
" when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I 

20 want to be poor ; but there was a middle state," (so she was 
pleased to ramble on,) " in which I am sure we were a great 
deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you 
have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be 
a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and Oh, how 

25 much ado I had to get you to consent in those times ! ) — 
we were used to have a debate two or three days before, 
and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might 
spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that 
should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, 

30 when we felt the money that we paid for it. 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to 
hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon you, 
it grew so thread-bare, and all because of that folio Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night 

35 from Barker's, in Covent Garden ? Do you remember how 



OLD CHINA. 47 

we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to 
the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it 
was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set 
off from Islington, fearing you should be too late, — and 
when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his 5 
shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed- 
wards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures, — and 
when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumber- 
some, — and when you presented it to me, — and when we 
were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it), — 10 
and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with 
paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till 
daybreak, — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? 
Or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and 
are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich 15 
and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you 
flaunted it about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau — 
for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to 
pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen shil- 
lings — or sixteen was it ? (a great affair we thought it 20 
then) which you had lavished on the old folio ? Now you 
can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not 
'see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases 
now. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for laying 25 
out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lio- 
nardo, which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; ' when you 
looked at the purchase, and thought of the money — and 
looked again at the picture, and thought of the money — 
was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now you have 30 
nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilder- 
ness of Lionardos. Yet do you ? 

" Then do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, 
and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday, 
(holidays and all other fun are gone now we are rich,) and 35 



48 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's 
fare of savoury cold lamb and salad — and how you would 
pry about at noontide for some decent house, where we 
might go in and produce our store, only paying for the ale 

5 that you must call for, and speculate upon the looks of the 
landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table- 
cloth, — and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak 
Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks 
of the Lea, when he went a fishing ; and sometimes they 

10 would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would 
look grudgingly upon us ; but we had cheerful looks still 
for one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, 
scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall. Now, when we 
go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we 

15 ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the 
best of dinners, never debating the expense, which, after all, 
never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, 
when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a pre : 
carious welcome. 

20 " You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in 
the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, 
when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of 
Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the 
Wood, — when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit 

25 three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery, 
where you felt all the time that you ought not to have 
brought me, and more strongly I felt obligation to you for 
having brought me, — and the pleasure was the better for a 
little shame, — and when the curtain drew up, what cared 

30 we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we 
were sitting, when our thoughts were with Kosalind in 
Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria ? You used to 
say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a 
play socially ; that the relish of such exhibitions must be in 

35 proportion to the inf requency of going ; that the company 



OLD CHINA. 49 

we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were 
obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was 
going on on the stage, because a word lost would have been 
a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. With 
such reflections we consoled our pride then ; and I appeal 5 
to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less atten- 
tion and accommodation than I have done since in more 
expensive situations in the house ? Getting in, indeed, and 
crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough ; 
but there was still a law of civility to woman recognized to 10 
quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other pas- 
sages ; and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the 
snug seat and the play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay 
our money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the 
galleries now. I am sure Ave saw, and heard too, well 15 
enough then ; but sight and all, I think, is gone with our 
poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries before they 
became quite common ; in the first dish of pease while they 
were yet dear ; to have them for a nice supper, a treat. 20 
What treat can we have now ? If we were to treat our- 
selves now — that is, to have dainties a little above our 
means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little 
more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor 
can get at, that makes what I call a treat — when two peo- 25 
pie living together, as we have done, now and then indulge 
themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while each 
apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame 
to his single share. I see no harm in people making much 
of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may give them 30 
a hint how to make much of others. But now, what I mean 
by the word — we never do make much of ourselves. None 
but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of 
all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. 

"I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 35 



s 



50 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet ; and much 
ado we used to have every Thirty -first Night of December 
to account for our exceedings ; many a long face did you 
make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it 
5 out how we had spent so much, or that we had not spent 
so much, or that it was impossible we should spend so much 
next year; and still we found our slender capital decreasing; 
but then, — betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of 
one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and 

10 doing without that for the future, and the hope that youth 
brings, and laughing spirits, (in which you were never poor 
till now,) we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 
'lusty brimmers,' (as you used to quote it out of hearty 
cheerful 3Ir. Cotton, as you called him,) we used to welcome 

15 in i the coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all 
at the end of the Old Year, — no flattering promises about 
the New Year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein I am careful how 

20 1 interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the 
phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had con- 
jured up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds 

a year. " It is true we were happier when we were poorer, 
but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must 

25 put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the super- 
flux into the sea we should not much mend ourselves. That 
we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we 
have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit 
our compact closer. AYe could never have been what we 

30 have been to each other if we had always had the sufficiency 
which you now complain of. The resisting power — those 
natural dilations of the youthful spirit which circumstances 
cannot straiten — with us are long since passed away. Com- 
petence to age is supplementary youth ; a sorry supplement 

35 indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride 



OLD CHINA. 51 

where we formerly walked; live better and lie softer — 
and shall be wise to do so — than we had means to do in 
those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days 
return ; could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a 
day ; could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and 5 
you and I be young to see them ; could the good old one- 
shilling gallery days return, (they are dreams, my cousin, 
now,) but could you and I at this moment, instead of this 
quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on 
this luxurious sofa, be once more struggling up those incon- 10 
venient staircases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed 
by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers ; could I 
once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the 
delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed 
when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of 15 
the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us, I know not 
the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I 
would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, 

or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. 

And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter 20 
holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the 
head of that pretty insipid half Madonna-ish chit of a lady 
in the verv blue summer-house." 



IV. 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend 
M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the 
first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or 
biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abys- 

5 sinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at 
by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mun- 
dane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age 
by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The 
manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or 

10 rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was 
accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine- 
herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, 
as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his 
cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly 

15 boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of 
his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle 
of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration 
over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to 
ashes. Together with the cottage, (a sorry antediluvian 

20 makeshift of a building, you may think it,) what was of 
much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, 
no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have 
been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest 
periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost conster- 

25 nation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the 
tenement, which his father and he could easily build up 
again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour 
or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he 
was thinking what he should say to his father, and wring- 

52 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 53 

ing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those 
untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike 
any scent which he had before experienced. What could 
it proceed from ? — not from the burnt cottage — he had 
smelt that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the 5 
iirst accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did 
it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A 
premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his 
nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped 10 
down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. 
He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in 
his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of 
the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for 
the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for 15 
before him no man had known it) he tasted — crackling ! 
Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him 
so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of 
habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understand- 
ing, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that 20 
tasted so delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new- 
born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the 
scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it 
down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire 
entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory 25 
cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows 
upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, 
which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been 
flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his 
lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any incon- 30 
veniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His 
father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his 
pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a 
little more sensible of his situation, something like the 
following dialogue ensued, 35 



54 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there devour- 
ing ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three 
houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but 
you must be eating tire, and I know not what — what have 

5 you got there, I say ? " 

" father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how nice 
the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, 
and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that 

10 should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it 
asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists 
of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, 

15 father, only taste — Lord ! " — with such-like barbarous 
ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his 
son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the 

20 crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, 
and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn 
tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths 
he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing 
to him. In conclusion, (for the manuscript here is a little 

25 tedious,) both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, 
and never left off till they had despatched all that remained 
of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a 

30 couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv- 
ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never- 
theless, strange stories got about. It was observed that 
Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than 
ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some 
35 would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 55 

As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of 
Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the 
more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to 
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they 
were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father 5 
and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an 
inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnox- 
ious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be 
pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some 
of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might 10 
be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled 
it; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had 
done before them, and nature prompting to each of them 
the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the 
clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to the sur- 15 
prise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, 
and all present — without leaving the box, or any manner 
of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous 
verdict of Not Guilty. 

The jnclge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the mani-20 
fest iniquity of the decision: and when the court was dis- 
missed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could 
be had for love or money. In a few days his lordship's 
town-house was observed to be on fire. The thing took 
wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in 25 
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all 
over the district. The insurance-offices one and all shut up 
shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it 
was feared that the very science of architecture would in no 
long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing 30 
houses continued, till in process of time, says my manu- 
script, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery 
that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might 
be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity ot 
consuming a wdiole house to dress it. Then first began the 35 



56 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit 
came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most 
useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way 

5 among mankind 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above 
given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so dan- 
gerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially 
in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary 

10 object, that pretext and excuse might be found in roast 
pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibttis, I will 
maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps obsoniorum. 
I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig 

15 and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and tender 
suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty — 
with no original speck of the amor immunditice, the he- 
reditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice 
as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble 

20 and a grumble — the mild forerunner or prceludium of a 
grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors 
ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the 
exterior tegument. 

25 There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of 
the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, 
as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share 
of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle 
resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous — call it not fat! 

30 but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the tender 
blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the 
shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintessence 
of the child-pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a 
kind of animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must 

35 be so) so blended and running into each other, that both 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 57 

together make but one ambrosian result or common sub- 
stance. 

Behold him while he is " doing " — it seemeth rather a 
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so pas- 
sive to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! Now 5 
he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that ten- 
der age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies 

— shooting stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth! 

— wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the gross- 10 
ness and indocility which too often accompany maturer 
swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a 
sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all 
manner of filthy conversation — from these sins he is happily 
snatched away — 15 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his 
stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver bolt- 
eth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in 20 
the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — and for such 
a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is 
indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet 
so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person 25 
would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she 
woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like 
lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 
pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she 
stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not with the appetite 30 

— and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for 
a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of 
the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the 



58 ESSAYS OF CHAHLES LAMB. 

censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and 
the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues 
and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled 
5 without hazard, he is — good throughout. No part of him is 
better or worse than another. He lielpeth, as far as his little 
means extend, all around. He is the least envious of ban- 
quets. He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a 

10 share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot 
(few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take 
as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, 
and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. " Presents," I 
often say, " endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, 

15 snipes, barn-door chickens (those " tame villatic fowl "), 
capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as 
freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, 
upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put 
somewhere. One would not, like Lear, " give everything." 

20 I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude 
to the Giver of all good flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send 
out of the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or 
I know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, pre- 
destined, I may say, to my individual palate. — It argues an 

25 insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of 
a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, 
into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smok- 

30 ing plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school 
(it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old beggar 
saluted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that he 
was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, 
and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of 

35 charity, school-boy like, I made him a present of — the whole 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 59 

cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such 
occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but, 
before 1 had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings 
returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I 
had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift 5 
away to a stranger that I had never seen before, and who 
might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then I thought 
of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I 
— I myself, and not another — would eat her nice cake — and 
what should I say to her the next time I saw her — how 10 
naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and the 
odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, 
and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her 
make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how 
disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it 15 
in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of 
alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and 
above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidi- 
ous, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 20 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with 
something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete 
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be 
curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what 
effect this process might have towards intenerating and 25 
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the 
flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we 
should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how 
we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a 
gusto. — 30 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, 
supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death 
by whipping (per Jtagellationem extremam) superadded a 35 



60 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any- 
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man 
justified in using that method of putting the animal to 
death?" I forget the decision. 

5 His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread 
crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of 
mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, 
the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your 
palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with planta- 

lOtions of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison 
them, or make them stronger than they are — but consider, 
he is a weakling — a flower. 



V. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiseth 
with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in any- 
thing. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold 
with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio 
Medici. 

That the author of the Eeligio Medici mounted upon the 
airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and 
conjectural essences; in whose categories of Being the pos- 
sible took the upper hand of the actual ; should have over- 
looked the impertinent individualities of such poor concre- 5 
tions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather 
to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he should 
have condescended to distinguish that species at all. For 
myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my 
activities, — 10 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national 
or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no 
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to 
me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes 15 
indifferent it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer 
words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and dis- 
likings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipa- 
thies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me 
that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indif- 20 
ferently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more 
purely-English word that expresses sympathy, will better 
explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, 

01 



62 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

who upon another account cannot be my mate or fellow. I 
cannot like all people alike. 1 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They 

5 cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that 
nation who attempted to do it. There is something more 
plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know 
one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect 
intellects (under which mine must be content to rank) which 

10 in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. The 
owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather 
suggestive than comprehensive. They have no pretences to 
much clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their man- 
ner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to 

15 confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are con- 
tent with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She 

1 1 would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect 
sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipa- 
thy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to 
another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have 
met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons 
meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly 
fighting. 

"We by proof find there should be 

'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Hey wood's " Ilierarchie of Angels," and he subjoins 
a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to assas- 
sinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no 
other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken 
to the first sight of the kinsr. 



The cause which to that act compell'd him 

Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 63 

presents no full front to them — a feature or side-face at the 
most. Hints and glimpses, genus and crude essays at a 
system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a 
little game peradventure — and leave it to knottier heads, 
more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that 5 
lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shift- 
ing : waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is 
accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out 
of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. 
They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — 10 
but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some 
abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but 
e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to 
impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without 
waiting for their full development. They are no systema- 15 
tizers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their 
minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain 
of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted 
upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in pano- 
ply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth 20 
— if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together 
upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind 
in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but 
unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. 
He brings his total wealth into company, and gravely un-25 
packs it. His riches are always about him. He never 
stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence to 
share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be true 
touch or not. You cannot cry halves to anything that he 
finds. He does not find, but bring. You never witness his 30 
first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always 
at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early 
streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, 
guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, 
partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, 35 



64 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight 
of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has 
no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Between 
the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land with 
5 him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of 
truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He 
always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with 
him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. 
His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or 

10 understand middle actions. There can be but a right and a 
wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations 
have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the 
square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected 
person in an enemy's country. " A healthy book ! " — said 

15 one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that 
appellation to John Buncle, — "Did I catch rightly what 
you said ? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy 
state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be prop- 
erly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of 

20 indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extin- 
guisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a 
vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a 
print of a graceful female after Lionardo da Vinci, which I 
was showing off to Mr. =****. After he had examined it 

25 minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty 
(a foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he 
very gravely assured me, that " he had considerable respect 
for my character and talents" (so he was pleased to say), 
" but had not given himself much thought about the degree 

30 of my personal pretensions." The misconception staggered 
me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of 
this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth — 
which nobody doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as 
annunciate it. They do indeed appear to have such a love 

35 of truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 65 

all truth becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition 
that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is im- 
possible to become a subject of disputation. I was present 
not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of 
Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly expres- 5 
sion (in my South British way), that I wished it were the 
father instead of the son — when four of them started up 
at once to inform me, that " that was impossible, because he 
was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than 
they could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their 10 
character, namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but 
with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to 
the margin. 1 The tediousness of these people is certainly 
provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In my 
early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of 15 
Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate my- 
self with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have 
always found that a true Scot resents your admiration of 
his compatriot even more than he would your contempt of 
him. The latter he imputes to your "imperfect acquaint- 20 
ance with many of the words which he uses ; " and the same 
objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that 
you can admire him. — Thomson they seem to have forgot- 
ten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for 
his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first 25 
introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a 
great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History 

1 There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, 
and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at 
all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day ; and 
this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other na- 
tion, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time 
or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the 
uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, peculiar to 
that country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on 
Convocation. 



66 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

compared with his Continuation of it. What if the historian 
had continued Humphrey Clinker ? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are 
a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stone- 

5 henge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyramids. 
But I should not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse 
with any of that nation. I confess that I have not the 
nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling 
about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. 

10 Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side, — 
of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, 
between our and their fathers, must and ought to affect the 
blood of the children. I cannot believe it can run clear 
and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candour, 

15 liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the 
breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowdiere 
congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change — for the 
mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in 
the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approxi- 

20 mation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fashion- 
able. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, something 
hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see the 
Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in awkward 
postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, why 

25 do they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a 
form of separation, when the life of it is fled ? If they can 
sit with us at table, w r hy do they keck at our cookery ? I do 
not understand these half convertites. Jews christianizing 
— Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A 

30 moderate Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than 
a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially 

separative. B would have been more in keeping if he 

had abided by the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine 
scorn in his face, which nature meant to be of — Christians. 

35 — The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 67 

proselytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it 
breaks out, when he sings, "The Children of Israel passed 
through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for the moment, are 
as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. 

There is no mistaking him. B has -a strong expression 5 

of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by his sing- 
ing. The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. He 
sings with understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. 
He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate 
character to each prohibition. His nation, in general, have 10 
not over-sensible countenances. How should they ? — but 
you seldom see a silly expression among them. — Gain, and 
the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard 
of an idiot being born among them. — Some admire the 
Jewish female-physiognomy. I admire it — but with trem- 15 
bling. Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong 
traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness 
towards some of these faces — or rather masks — that have 
looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the 20 
streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls 
— these " images of God cut in ebony." But I should not 
like to associate with them, to share my meals and my good 
nights with them — because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 25 
Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day 
when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am 
ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet 
voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening 
the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot 30 
like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) " to live with 
them." I am all over sophisticated — with humours, fancies, 
craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, 
theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thou- 
sand whim-whams, which their simpler taste can do without. 35 



68 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites 
are too high for the salads which (according to Evelyn) 
Eve dressed for the angel; my gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

5 The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to 
return to a question put to them may be explained, I think, 
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to 
evasion and equivocating than other people. They natu- 
rally look to their words more carefully, and are more 

10 cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar 
character to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner 
upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from 
taking an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in 
extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, 

15 is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer 
sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth — the one 
applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other 
to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth 
bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so 

20 in the common affirmations of the shop and the market- 
place a latitude is expected and conceded upon questions 
wanting this solemn convenant. Something less than truth 
satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, " You do not 
expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a 

25 great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of false- 
hood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of 
secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — 
oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not re- 
quired. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His 

30 simple affirmation being received upon the most sacred 
occasions, without any further test, stamps a value upon 
the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent 
topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more 
severity. You can have of him no more than his word. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 69 

He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, 
he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious 
exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed — and 
how far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, 
exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect 5 
answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, 
might be illustrated, and the practice justified by a more 
sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this 
occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is no- 
torious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced 10 
to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not seem rather 
an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious 
constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive 
Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the 
violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking exam- 15 
inations. " You will never be the wiser, if I sit here an- 
swering your questions till midnight," said one of those 
upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases 
with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter as the answers may 
be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of 20 
this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter 
instances. — I was travelling in a stage-coach with three 
male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity 
of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a 
meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before 25 
us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in 
my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the 
bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had 
charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess 
was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments 30 
were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated 
mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. 
The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The 
Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it — 
so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine 35 



70 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

— for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax 
in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their sil- 
ver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest 
and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, 

5 who thought I could not do better than follow the example 
of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. 
The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs 
of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pro- 
nounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my 

10 conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while 
suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in 
the hope that some justification would be offered by these 
serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. 
To my great surprise not a syllable was dropped on the 

15 subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the 
eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neigh- 
bour, "Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House ? " 
and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling 
as far as Exeter. 



VI. 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 

FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 

In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two since, 
I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school, 1 such as it was, 
or now appears to him to have been, between the years 1782 
and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing 
at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his ; and with all 5 
gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think 
he has contrived to bring together whatever can be said in 
praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument 
most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that he 10 
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his 
schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were 
near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see them, 
almost as often as he wished, through some invidious dis- 
tinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy sub- 15 
treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that happened. 
He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were 
battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — our crufj — 
moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, 
smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. 20 
( )ur Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the 
pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched 
for him with a slice of " extraordinary bread and butter," 
from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess 
of millet, somewhat less repugnant (we had three banyan to 25 
four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his palate 

1 Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 
71 



72 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to 
make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. 
In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef 
on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable mari- 

5 golds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty 
mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, 
on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our appetites, 
and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion) 

10 — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting 
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the 
paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by 
his maid or aunt ! I remember the good old relative (in 
whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd 

15 stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of 
higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered 
to the Tishbite) ; and the contending passions of L. at the 
unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for the 
thing brought, and the manner of its bringing ; sympathy 

20 for those who were too many to share in it ; and, at top of 
all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions!) predominant, 
breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, 
and a troubling over-consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who 

25 should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaint- 
ances of theirs, which they could reckon upon as being kind 
to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which 
they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, 
soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them 

30 to recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; and, 
one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone 
among six hundred playmates. 

the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early 
homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards 

35 it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would my 



Christ's hospital. 73 

native town (far in the west) come back, with its church, 
and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in 
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wilt- 
shire ! 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by 5 
the recollection of those friendless holidays. The long warm 
days of summer never return but they bring with them a 
gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day leaves, 
when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out, 
for the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we hadio 
friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing-excur- 
sions to the New River, which L. recalls with such relish, 
better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking lad, 
and did not much care for such water-pastimes : — How 
merrily we would sally forth into the fields; and strip under 15 
the first warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace in 
the streams ; getting us appetites for noon, which those of 
us that were penniless (our scanty morning crust long since 
exhausted) had not the means of allaying — while the cattle, 
and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we 20 
had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the 
day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, 
setting a keener edge upon them! — How faint and languid, 
finally, we would return, towards nightfall, to our desired 
morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of our 25 
uneasy liberty had expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about 
the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print 
shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last 
resort, in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times 30 
repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well 
known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the 
Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, 
we had a prescriptive title to admission. 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to 35 



74 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. 
Any complaint which he had to make was sure of being 
attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and was an 
effectual screen to him against the severity of masters, or 
5 worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these 
young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I 
have been called out of my bed, and waked/or the purpose, 
in the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night 
after night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a 

10 leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it 
pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talk- 
ing heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last 
beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us 
slept, answerable for an offence they neither dared to com- 

lsmit, nor had the power to hinder. — The same execrable 
tyranny drove the younger part of us from the fires, when 
our feet were perishing with snow ; and, under the cruellest 
penalties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when 
we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season 

20 and the day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned in after days, was 

seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I 
flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of 
that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts, — 

25 some few years since? My friend Tobin w^as the benevolent 
instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty 
Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a 
red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us, with exacting 
contributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a 

30 young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the con- 
nivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he 
had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the 
icard, as they called our dormitories. This game went on 
for better than a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare 

35 well but he must cry roast meat — happier than Caligula's 



CHRIST^ HOSPITAL. 75 

minion, could he have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, 
alas ! than any of his species in the fables — waxing fat, and 
kicking, in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would 
needs proclaim his good fortune to the world below ; and, 
laying out his simple throat, blew such a ram's horn blast, 5 
as (toppling down the walls of his own Jericho) set con- 
cealment any longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, 
with certain attentions, to Smithfield; but I never under- 
stood that the patron underwent any censure on the occa- 
sion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 10 

Under the same facile administration, can L. have for- 
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to 
carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables, 
one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron 
had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners ? 15 
These things were daily practised in that magnificent apart- 
ment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume), 
praises so highly for the grand paintings "by Yerrio and 
others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But 
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at 20 
that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the liv- 
ing ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried 
away before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves reduced 
(with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 25 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or 
the fat of fresh beef boiled; and sets it down to some su- 
perstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grateful 
to young palates (children are universally fat-haters), and 
in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A :;o 
gag-cater in our time was equivalent to a goule, and held in 
equal detestation. suffered under the imputation : — 

.... 'T was said 
He ate strange flesh. 



76 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the 
remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice frag- 
ments, you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, 
these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, 
5 and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. 
None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that he 
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable. 
Some reported that, on leave-days, he had been seen to 

10 carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief 
full of something. This then must be the accursed thing. 
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could dis- 
pose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This be- 
lief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None 

15 spake to him. No one would play with him. He was ex- 
communicated ; put out of the pale of the school. He was 
too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every 
mode of that negative punishment, which is more grievous 
than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was 

20 observed by two of his schoolfellows, who were determined 
to get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for 
that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as 
there exist specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let 
out to various scales of pauperism, with open door, and a 

25 common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and 
followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a 
poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly 
clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The in- 
formers had secured their victim. They had him in their 

30 toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution 
most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then stew- 
ard (for this happened a little after my time), with that 
patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, determined 
to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to sentence. 

35 The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers 



Christ's hospital. 77 

or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the 

parents of , an honest couple come to decay, — whom 

this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from 
mendicancy : and that this young stork, at the expense of 
his own good name, had all this while been only feeding the 5 
old birds ! — The governors on this occasion, much to their 

honour, voted a present relief to the family of , and 

presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the 
steward read upon rash judgment, on the occasion of pub- 
licly delivering the medal to , I believe, would not be 10 

lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, but I well 

remember . He was a tall, shambling youth, with a 

cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile 
prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's bas- 
ket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself 15 
as he had done by the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in fet- 
ters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, 
was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of ini- 
tiation. I was of tender years, barely turned of seven ; and 20 
had only read of such things in books, or seen them but in 
dreams. I was told he had run away. This was the punish- 
ment for the first offence. — As a novice I was soon after 
taken to see the dungeons. These were little, square, Bed- 
lam cells, where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw 25 
j, blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards substi- 
.ited — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison 
orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy 
was locked in by himself all day, without sight of any but 
the porter who brought him his bread and water — who 30 
might not speak to him ; — or of the beadle, who came twice 
a week to call him out to receive his periodical chastise- 
ment, which was almost welcome, because it separated him 
for a brief interval from solitude: — and here he was shut 
up by himself of nights, out of the reach of any sound, to 35 



78 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition 
incident to his time of life, might subject him to. 1 This 
was the penalty for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, 
Header, to see what became of him in the next degree ? 

5 The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 
brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in 
uncouth and most appalling attire, all trace of his late 
" watchet-weeds " carefully effaced, he was exposed in a 

10 jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters for- 
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of 
this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it 
could have anticipated. With his pale and frightened 
features, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante 

15 had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought 
into the hall (Z.'s favourite state-room), where awaited him 
the whole number of his schoolfellows, whose joint lessons 
and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful 
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the 

20 executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; 
and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in 
these extremities visible. These were governors ; two of 
whom, by choice, or charter, were always accustomed to 
officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate (so at 

25 least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe- 
Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, were 
colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather 
pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for the 
mysteries. The scourging was, after the old Roman fash- 

30 ion, long and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal 

1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, at 
length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the sentence, 
and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of 
dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain ; for which (saving 
the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks I could willingly spit upon his 
statue. 



Christ's hospital. 79 

quite round the hall. We were generally too faint with at- 
tending to the previous disgusting circumstances to make 
accurate report with our eyes of the degree of corporal 
suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the back 
knotty and livid. After scourging, he was made over, in 5 
his San Benito, to his friends, if he had any (but commonly 
such poor runagates were friendless), or to his parish officer, 
who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his station 
allotted to him on the outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as 10 
to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had 
plenty of exercise and recreation after school hours ; and, 
for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier than 
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were 
held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only divided 15 
their bounds. Their character was as different as that of 
the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. 
James Boyer was the Upper Master, but the Rev. Matthew 
Field presided over that portion of the apartment, of which 
I had the good fortune to be a member. We lived a life as 20 
careless as birds. We talked and did just what we "pleased, 
and nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, or a 
grammar, for form ; but, for any trouble it gave us, we 
might take two years in getting through the verbs deponent, 
and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about 25 
them. There was now and then the formality of saying a 
lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the 
shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole re- 
monstrance. Field never used the rod ; and in truth he 
wielded the cane with no great good will — holding it " like 30 
a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem 
than an instrument of authority ; and an emblem, too, he 
was ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did not 
care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great con- 
sideration upon the value of juvenile time. He came among 35 



80 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

us, now and then, but often staid away whole days from us; 
and when he came, it made no difference to us — he had his 
private room to retire to, the short time he staid, to be out 
of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. 
5 We had classics of our own, without being beholden to " in- 
solent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among 
us — Peter Wilkins — The Adventures of the Hon. Captain 
Robert Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-coat Boy — and the like. 
Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic and scientific opera- 

lOtions; making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those 
ingenious parentheses, called cat-cradles; or making dry 
peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying the 
art military over that laudable game "French and English," 
and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time — 

15 mixing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made 
the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen 
us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines 
who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman 'the 

20 scholar and the Christian; but, I know not how, the first 
ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose 
in the composition. He was engaged in gay parties, or with 
his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he should 
have been attending upon us. He had for many years the 

25 classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or 
five first years of their education; and his very highest form 
seldom proceeded further than two or three of the introduc- 
tory fables of Phaedrus. How things were suffered to go on 
thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to 

30 have remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a 
delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his own. I 
have not been without my suspicions, that he was not alto- 
gether displeased at the contrast we presented to his end 
of the school. We were a sort of Helots to his young Spar- 

35 tans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to 



Christ's hospital. 81 

borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic 
grin, observe to one of his upper boys, "how neat and fresh 
the twigs looked." While his pale students were battering 
their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep 
as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves 5 
at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the 
secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more 
reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for 
us ; his storms came near, but never touched us ; contrary 
to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our 10 
fleece was dry. 1 His boys turned out the better scholars ; 
we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils 
cannot speak of him without something of terror allaying 
their gratitude ; the remembrance of Field comes back with 
all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, 15 
and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian 
exemptions, and life itself a " playing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction -of 
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand 
a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of 20 
the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a 
rabid pedant. His English style w T as crampt to barbarism. 
His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those peri- 
odical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. 2 — He would 
laugh — ay, and heartily — but then it must be at Flaccus's25 

quibble about Hex or at the tristis sever Has in vultu, or 

inspicere in patinas, of Terence — thin jests, which at their 



1 Cowley. 

2 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. While 
the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a pig-nut, F. 
would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery walks of 
the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the name of Vertumnus 
and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of litera- 
ture. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did not give it their sanc- 
tion. — B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half-irony, that 
it was too classical for representation. 



82 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

first broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a 
Roman muscle. — He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of 
different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh powdered, 
betokening a mild day. The other, an old discoloured, 
5 unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execu- 
tion. Woe to the school, when he made his morning appear- 
ance in his passy, or passionate ivig. No comet expounded 
surer. — J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double 
his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk 

10 hardly dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you presume to 
set your wits at me ? " — Nothing was more common than 
to see him make a headlong entry into the school-room, 
from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eye, 
singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's my life, sirrah " (his 

15 favourite adjuration), " I have a great mind to whip you," 
— then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into 
his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (dur- 
ing which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the con- 
text) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect 

20 sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the exple- 
tory yell — " and I will too." — In his gentler moods, 
when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an 
ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to him- 
self, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the 

25 same time ; a paragraph and a lash between; wdiich in those 
times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a height and 
flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to impress 
the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of 
rhetoric, 

30 Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. — 
First Grecian of my time w r as Lancelot Pepys Stevens, 
kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and in- 
separable companion) with Dr. T e. What an edifying 

spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who 

35 remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors ! — You 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 83 

never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, 
which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub- 
appearance of the other. Generally arm-in-arm, these kindly 
coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome duties of 
their profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it 5 
convenient to retire, the other was not long in discovering 
that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is 
pleasant, as it is rare, to rind the same arm linked in yours 
at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero 
De Amicitid, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the 10 
young heart even then was burning to anticipate ! — Co- 
Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed with 

ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. 

Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, 

with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed 15 
him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in 
his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic ; and 
is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Treatise on 
the Greek Article, against Sharpe. — M. is said to bear his 
mitre high in India, where the regni nor Has (I dare say) suf-20 
ficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite as primitive 
as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly fitted to 
impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a 
reverence for home institutions, and the church which those 
fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, 25 
were mild and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not senior to 
him) was Kichards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the 
most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious 

Grecian. — Then followed poor S , ill-fated M ! of 

these the Muse is silent. 30 

Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day 
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before 



84 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen 
the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced 
with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between 

5 the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee 
unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries 
of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou 
waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting 
Homer in his Greek, or Pindar while the walls of the old 

10 Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity- 
boy ! — Many were the " wit-combats " (to dally awhile with 

the words of old Fuller), between him and C. V. Le G , 

" which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an 
English man of war : Master Coleridge, like the former, was 

15 built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his perform 
ances. C. V. L., with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, 
but lighter in sailing, could turn with all times, tack about, 
and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit 
and invention." 

20 Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, 
with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with 
which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in 
thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipa- 
tion of some more material, and peradventure practical one, 

25 of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful 
countenance, with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus 
of the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou 
didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, 
incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, 

30 suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half- 

f ormecl terrible " bl ," for a gentler greeting — " bless thy 

handsome face ! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 
friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who im- 
pelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too 



Christ's hospital. 85 

quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights 
poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning 
— exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; perishing, one 

by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca : — Le G , 

sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged, faithful, 5 

anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the 
old Roman height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hert- 
ford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — and 

both my good friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians 10 
in my time. 



VII. 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this arti- 
cle — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye 
(which, while it reads, seems as though it read not), never 
fails to consult the quis scutysit in the corner, before he pro- 

5nounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet — me- 
thinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half- 
forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old 
house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you 

10 have already set me down in your mind as one of the self- 
same college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt 
scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick 
people are said to do, through a quill. 

Well, I do agnise something of the sort. I confess that 

15 it is my humour, my fancy — in the fore-part of the day, 
when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxa- 
tion (and none better than such as at first sight seems most 
abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some 
good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cot- 

20 tons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the 
first place ********* 
and then it sends you home with such increased appetite 
to your books ******** 
not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers 

25 of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, 
the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the 
very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the 
settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has 
plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 87 

and ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the 
flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. — It 
feels its promotion. *####=*# 

So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of 
Elia is very little, if at all, compromised in the con- 5 
descension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities 
incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought 
blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be 
able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have 10 
leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, 
and doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory inter- 
stices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four sea- 
sons — the red-letter days, now become, to all intents and 
purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, 15 
and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back 
as when I was at school at Christ's. I remember their 
effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. 20 
There hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy 
in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas 
by Spagnoletti. — I honoured them all, and could almost 
have wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we 
love to keep holy memories sacred: — only methought I a 25 
little grudged at the coalition of the better Jade with Simon 

— clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make 
up one poor gaudy-day between them — as an economy un- 
worthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's 30 
life — "far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an 
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a saint's- 
day falls out next week, or the week after. Peradventure 
the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in 



88 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than 
one of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the 
wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged the further 
observation of these holy tides to be papistical, supersti- 

5 tious. Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, 
if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first 
sounded — but I am wading out of my depths. I am not 
the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical 
authority — I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop 

10 Usher — though at present in the thick of their books, here 
in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty 
Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young 

15 years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere 
is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one 
or other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this 
time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can 
take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what 

20 degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. 
I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel- 
bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility 
I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein 
rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, 

25 1 proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am 
much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your 
dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow 
or a curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of 
the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. 

30 Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be con- 
tent to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the 
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls 
deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unper- 

35 ceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 89 

Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait 
seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to 
adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the 
way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique 
hospitality : the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire- 5 
places, cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked 
four centuries ago ; and spits which have cooked for 
Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister among the dishes 
but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the 
Cook goes forth a Manciple. 10 

Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that, 
being nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, thou wert 
not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a re- 
moter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with 
blind veneration ; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, 15 
modern ! What mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what 
half Januses l are we, that cannot look forward with the 
same idolatry with which we for ever revert ! The mighty 
future is as nothing, being everything ! the past is every- 
thing, being nothing. 20 

What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun rose as 
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the 
morning ? Why is it we can never hear mention of them 
without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable 
obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our ances-25 
tors wandered to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride 
and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, 
thy shelves 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as 30 
though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed 
their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 
some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, 
to profane the leaves, their winding sheets. I could as soon 
1 Januses of one face.— Sin Thomas Browne. 



90 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid 
their foliage ; and the odonr of their old moth-scented cov- 
erings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples 
which grew amid the happy orchard. 

5 Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of 
MSS. Those varies lectiones, so tempting to the more 
erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I 
am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses 
might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these 

10 curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I 
found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged 
out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. With 
long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He stood as 
passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I longed to 

15 new-coat him in russia, and assign him his place. He might 
have mustered for a tall Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. No 
inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I apprehend, 
is consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's Inn — 

20 where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his 
unconscious abode, amid an incongruous assembly of attor- 
neys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin of the 
law, among whom he sits, " in calm and sinless peace." The 
fangs of the law pierce him not — the winds of litigation 

25 blow over his humble chambers — the hard sheriff's officer 

moves his hat as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy 

touches him — none thinks of offering violence or injustice 

to him — you would as soon " strike an abstract idea." 

1). has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of 

30 laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter 
connected with the two Universities ; and has lately lit upon 

a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by which he 

hopes to settle some disputed points — particularly that long 
controversy between them as to priority of foundation. The 

35 ardour with which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 91 

afraid, has not met with all the encouragement it deserved, 

either here or at C . Your caputs, and heads of colleges, 

care less than anybody else about these questions. — Con- 
tented to suck the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, 
without inquiring into the venerable gentlewomen's years, 5 
they rather hold such curiosities to be impertinent — unrev- 
erend. They have their good glebe lands in manu, and care 
not much to rake into the title-deeds. I gather at least so 
much from other sources, for D. is not a man to complain. 

D. started like an unbroken heifer, when I interrupted 10 
him. A priori it was not very probable that we should have 
met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had I 
accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's 
Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking short- 
sightedness (the effect of late studies and watchings at the 15 
midnight oil) D. is the most absent of men. He made a call 
the other morning at our friend M.'s in Bedford Square ; 
and, finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, 
where, asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude of pur- 
pose he enters me his name in the book — which ordinarily 20 
lies about in such places, to record the failures of the un- 
timely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his leave with 
many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some two or 
three hours after, his walking destinies returned him into 
the same neighbourhood again, and again the quiet image of 25 
the fireside circle at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a 
Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irresisti- 
bly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they 
were " certainly not to return from the country before that 
day week "), and disappointed a second time, inquires for 30 
pen and paper as before : again the book is brought, and in 
the line just above that in which he is about to print his 
second name (his re-script) — his first name (scarce dry) 
looks out upon him like another Sosia, or as if a man should 
suddenly encounter his own duplicate ! — The effect may 35 



92 ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 

be conceived. D. made many a good resolution against 
any such lapses in future. I hope he will not keep them 
too rigorously. 

For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is some- 
5 times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with 
the Lord. At the very time when, personally encounter- 
ing thee, he passes on with no recognition or, being 

stopped, starts like a thing surprised — at that moment, 
Keader, he is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co- 

10 sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, framing "immor- 
tal commonwealths " — devising some plan of amelioration 

to thy country, or thy species perad venture meditating 

some individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thy- 
self, the returning consciousness of which made him to start 

15 so guilty at thy obtruded personal presence. 

[D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 
house of " pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic 
schoolmaster at * * *, at a salary of eight pounds per 
annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, he 

20 never received above half in all the laborious years he served 
this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, 
staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled 
him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, 
Dr. * * * would take no immediate notice, but after supper, 

25 when the school was called together to evensong, he would 
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against 
riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through 
the desire of them — ending with "Lord, keep Thy servants, 
above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having 

30 food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me 
Agur's wish " — and the like — which, to the little audi- 
tory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and 
simplicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that 
quarter's demand at least. 

35 And D. has been under-working for himself ever since ; — 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 93 

drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, — 
wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the class- 
ics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to learn- 
ing which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, 
who have not the heart to sell themselves to the best ad van- 5 
tage. He has published poems, which do not sell, because 
their character is unobtrusive, like his own, and because he 
has been too much absorbed in ancient literature to know 
what the popular mark in poetry is, even if he could have 
hit it. And, therefore, his verses are properly, what he 10 
terms them, crotchets ; voluntaries ; odes to liberty and 
spring; effusions; little tributes and offerings, left behind 
him upon tables and window-seats at parting from friends' 
houses ; and from all the inns of hospitality, where he has 
been courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrim- 15 
age. If his muse of kindness halt a little behind the 
strong lines in fashion in this excitement-loving age, his 
prose is the best of the sort in the world, and exhibits a 
faithful transcript of his own healthy, natural mind, and 
cheerful, innocent tone of conversation.] 20 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such 
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of 
his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. The 
Cam and the Isis are to him " better than all the waters of 
Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as 25 
one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; and 
when he goes about with you to show you the halls and col- 
leges, you think you have with you the Interpreter at the 
House Beautiful. 



NOTES 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

This essay appeared originally in the London Magazine for May, 
1825, and was called forth by Lamb's retirement from the East India 
House on a pension, after serving there for thirty-three years. This 
event occurred in March, 1825. With but few altt rations the essay 
is substantially autobiographical. His pension was four hundred and 
forty pounds, and after his death was continued to his sister Mary. 

"■Sera tamen respexit libertas" (Virgil). Liberty, although late, 
looked back. 

Page 31, 1. 10. " Mincing Lane." The name of a street in London. 

Page 32, 1. 21. " Hertfordshire." One of the English counties in 
the immediate region of London. 

Page 33, 1. 8. " I served over again all night in my sleep." It is 
said of a dog that he hunts in his dreams. In " Locksley Hall " Tenny- 
son has embodied this same idea : "Like a dog, he hunts in dreams." 

1. 12. "And the wood had entered into my soul." (Psalms 105. 18. 
Cranmer's version) " The iron had entered into his soul." 

Page 34, 1. 2-5. Note here Lamb's characteristic frankness and 
ingenuousness. 

1. 21. " Boldero," "Merry weather," " Bosanquet," and "Lacy." 
Imaginary names for the directors of the East India House. 

1. 22. u Esto perpetual Latin for Let it be continued. 

1. 26, 27. " I was in the condition of the prisoner in the old Bas- 
tile." The Bastile was a prison in Paris, which was destroyed in 
1789. Queret Demery was a French prisoner who was liberated after 
thirty years' imprisonment. 

Page 35, 1. 18, 19. 

" that's born, and has his years come to him, 

In some green desert." 

Inaccurately quoted from Middleton's " Mayor of Quinboro'," 
(Act I., scene 1) ; the last line should be " In a rough desert." 

Page 36, 1. 8. " Sir Robert Howard," an English poet, born, 1626, 
died, 1698. 

95 



96 NOTES. 

Page 37, 1. 5. " Gresham," " Whittington," Lord Mayors of 
Loudon. 

1. 13. "Aquinas." Thomas Aquiuas, a theologian and scholastic 
philosopher, born about 1227, died, 1274. He was a voluminous writer. 

1.22. "Carthusian." A hospital and school for boys called the 
Charter House, founded in 1371. In 1611 it became a charity and hos- 
pital for decayed gentlemen. An occupant was called a Carthusian. 

1.29. "Soho." A famous square in London, south of Oxford 
Street, three-fourths of a mile north of Charing Cross. 

1. 32. "Fish Street Hill." This street is sometimes called New 
Fish Street, and runs from East Cheap to Lower Thames Street, and 
was the main thoroughfare to the old London Bridge. 

1.33. " Fenchurch Street." A street in London running from 
Gracechurch Street to Aldgate. It i's mentioned as far back as 1276. 
The Mitre Tavern, famous in the days of Pepys, was situated there. 

Page 38, 1. 3. "Pall Mall." A street in London leading from 
Trafalgar Square to Green Park. Its name is derived from a game 
once played there called PuUe-Malle, from the Italian palla, a ball, 
and maglia, a mallet. In the eighteenth century it was a famous resort 
for taverns, clabs, etc., where literary and other societies met and had 
a convivial time. 

1. 4. " Elgin marbles." Fragments of Greek sculpture mostly from 
the Parthenon at Athens, made by the sculptor Phidias, 440 b.c. They 
were brought to England in 1802. by Thomas, Lord Elgin, and in 1816 
were acquired by the British Museum for $175,000. 

1. 16. "Ethiop." (Jeremiah xiii. 23) "Can the Ethiopian change 
his skin, or the leopard his spots ? " 

1. 25. " Insult." Used in the sense of to exult. 

1. 26. " Windsor." One of the residences of the sovereign of Eng- 
land, a few miles out of London. 

1. 27. " Lucretian pleasure." Lucretius was a disciple of Epicurus ; 
hence a pleasure of the senses. 

Page 39, 1. 9. "cum dignitate." Latin for With dignity. 

DREAM CHILDREN. 

This essay appeared originally in the London Magazine for January, 
1822. Lamb had recently lost his older brother John, and was expe- 
riencing a certain " deadness to everything," to use his own words. 
As is ordinarily the case with his essays, this one is partly autobio- 
graphical. He had only one near relative left, and that was his sister 
Mary. He felt therefore his loneliness in more than usual degree. 



NOTES. 97 

Page 40, 1.6. " Great-grandmother Field." Lamb's grandmother 

had been for fifty years housekeeper for an old family at Blakesware, 
in Hertfordshire. " Norfolk." Of course this is a disguise for Hert- 
fordshire. 

1. 11. "The Children in the Wood." The name of an old ballad 
to be found in Percy's " Reliques of Ancient Poetry," and familiar 
to children the world over. 

Page 41, 1. 3. "Abbey." Westminster Abbey in London. 

1. 11. "Psaltery." This is an inaccurate use of the word. The 
Psalter, which is the Book of Psalms, as printed in the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer. 

1. 34. "Twelve Csesars." From Augustus to Domitian, the 
emperors of Rome are called the twelve Caesars. 

1. 12-30. Note the delicate humor of this and other interjected 
sentences, showing the children's conduct as a result of the story in 
progress. 

Page 43, 1. 20. See Lamb's quotation from Sir Robert Howard in 
" The Superannuated Man." 

1. 32. "Alice W n." The young woman with whom Lamb 

seems to have been in love, and the only one who is thought to have 
had his affection. Her real name was Alice Simmons. She after- 
ward married a pawnbroker in London named Bartram. There is 
much mystery about this love affair ; for obvious reasons Lamb was 
not destined to marry, but his recollection of this early love was most 
genuine and real. 

Page 44, 1. 12. "Lethe." A classic term meaning death. In 
mythology it is the name of a river in Hades whose waters, when 
drunk, cause forgetfulness of the past. 

1. 15. "Bridget," Lamb always referred to his sister Mary as 
Bridget Elia, and to his brother John as James Elia. These are some 
of his numerous mystifications, in part autobiographical and in part 
pure fun. 

OLD CHINA. 

This essay appeared originally in the London Magazine for March, 
1823. It is one of the sweetest and most beautiful of all Lamb's 
essays. A picture of quiet content and homely joy is given, which 
throws much light on the happier days of the life of brother and sister. 

Page 45. 1. 13. " In that world before perspective." When there 
were no relative values. 

1. 29. " Right angle of incidence." A term in physics, denoting 



98 NOTES. 

the angle which a ray of light, or the line of incidence of a body (fall- 
ing on any surface), makes with a perpendicular to that surface. 

Page 46, 1.4. " Dancing the hays." An old English dance spelled 
by Herrick and other writers of his time " heyes." 

1. 7. " Cathay." The name given to North China by Marco Polo. 
It is of Persian origin. See Tennyson's lines in Locksley Hall : — 

" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 

1. 10. " Speciosa miracula.' n Latin for Beautiful creations. 

1. 34. " Beaumont and Fletcher." Two well-known English dra- 
matists. The former was born in 1586 and died in 1616, and the latter 
in 1576 and died in 1625 ; thus they were contemporary with Shake- 
speare. 

1. 35. "Covent Garden." A space in London between the Strand 
and Longacre. It was formerly the convent garden of the monks of St. 
Peter, Westminster. The square was laid out for the Earl of Bedford, 
and partly built by the great architect, Inigo Jones, whose church, St. 
Pauls, still remains. Formerly its coffee houses and taverns were the 
resorts of noted men, such as Dry den, Fielding, Garrick, Foote, and 
others. A famous market and a theater are there now. 

Page 47, 1. 17. "Old corbeau." The French name for a raven ; 
hence black. 

1. 26. " Lionardo." Lionardo da Vinci, an Italian artist of distinc- 
tion who flourished in the fifteenth century. He was born in 1452 and 
died in 1519. 

1. 31. " Colnaghi's." A picture dealer in London. 

1.33,34. "Enfield," "Potter's Bar," " Waltham." Environs of 
London. 

Page 48, 1. 7. " Izaak Walton." An English writer of the seven- 
teenth century who was distinguished principally as the author of 
"The Compleat Angler." Born, 1593, died, 1683. 

1. 9. " Lea." A river in Hertfordshire, in which Walton was fond 
of fishing. It is forty-five miles long, and joins the Thames four miles 
east of London. 

1. 13. " Piscator." The Latin name for fisherman. 

1. 22. " Battle of Hexham," " Surrender of Calais." Two popular 
plays by George Coleman the younger. 

1. 23. " Bannister," " Mrs. Bland." Favorite actors in Lamb's time. 

1. 31. " Rosalind in Arden." Rosalind is the heroine in Shake- 
speare's "As You Like It," and the Forest of Arden was in Warwick- 
shire. 



NOTES. 99 

1. 32. "Viola at the Court of Illyria." From Shakespeare's 
" Twelfth Night." Viola was shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, in 
North Africa. 

Page 50, 1. 14. " Mr. Cotton." Charles Cotton was a friend and 
fellow angler with Izaak Walton ; he contributed chapters to Part II. 
" The Compleat Angler." Born, 1630, died, 1687. 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

This essay first appeared in print in the London Magazine for Sep- 
tember, 1822. The essential parts of the legend, it is said, were sent 
to Lamb by his friend and correspondent, Kev. Thomas Manning, whose 
acquaintance he had made at Cambridge many years before. Man- 
ning was traveling and exploring in China and Thibet. This legend, 
which gives the origin of cooking, is a very ancient one, and is said to 
have been known in the third century. Lamb was most fond of roast 
pig, and his rhapsody was a natural one. In a letter to Coleridge, 
written on March 9, 1822, in response to a present of a small pig, Lamb 
had given the substance of this legend. Six months later he wrote the 
essay, on somewhat the same lines, giving his fancy fuller play, and 
rollicking through the subject in a highly characteristic manner. 

Page 52, 1. 6. " Confucius." The most noted Chinese philosopher, 
who lived in the sixth century, b.c. 

Page 53, 1.16. "Crackling." The crisp outer skin of roast pork. 

Page 55, 1. 7. "Assize." • Court of justice in England, held two or 
three times a year in a county or circuit. 

1. 32. " Locke." John Locke was a great English philosopher born, 
1662, died, 1704. His most celebrated book was "An Essay Con- 
cerning Human Understanding," published, 1690. 

Page 56, 1. 12. "Mundus edibilis.' n The Latin for World of eatables. 

1. 13. " Priuceps obsoniorum." Latin for Chief of dainties. 

1. 17. " Amor immunditice." Latin for Love of filthiness. 

Page 58, 1. 19. " Lear." Shakespeare's play of " King Lear," Act 
III., scene 2, " I gave you all." 

1. 21. " Extra-domiciliate." A word coined by Lamb, meaning 
outside a dwelling house. 

1. 31. "London Bridge." The famous bridge that crosses the 
Thames from Middlesex to the Surrey Side, connecting King William 
Street with Borough High Street. The present one was built in 1825. 

Page 59, 1. 25. " Intenerating and dulcifying" i.e. softening and 
sweetening. 

1. 32. " St. Omer's." A Jesuit college in France, near Calais, where 
many English lads went to school. 

LofC 



100 NOTES. 

1. 35. " Per flagellationem extremam." Latin phrase for Whipping 
to the extreme limit. 

Page 60, 1. 8. " Barbecue." The word is from the language of the 
Indians of Guiana, and is the name of a sort of gridiron. Here it is 
used to denote roasting whole. 

1. 9. " Shalots." A kind of onion. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

This essay appeared first in the London Magazine for August, 1821, 
and was originally called "Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and other 
Imperfect Sympathies." It contains Lamb's analysis of Scottish 
character. 

Page 61, 1. 1. " Religio Medici." The name of a famous book 
by Sir Thomas Browne, published in 1653. 

1. 11. " Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky." A quotation 
from Milton's " Paradise Lost " (Book VII., 23) slightly misquoted; 
the original line has " pole " instead of "sky." 

Page 62, 1. 10. "Anti-Caledonian." Caledonia was the ancient 
name of Scotland. 

Footnote. " Hey wood's ' Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels ' " was 
first issued in 1035. The author was a certain Thomas Heywood who 
was born in Lincolnshire, England. He died about 1050. 

Page 64, 1. 16. "John Buncle." Thomas Amory, who wrote the 
" Life of John Buncle, Esq." in 1750-1700, was born, 1091, and died, 
1788. He was a Unitarian, very eccentric, and possessed some of the 
qualities that would appeal most to Lamb. 

1. 23. " Lionardo da Vinci." Italian painter, sculptor, architect, 
etc., born, 1452, died, 1519. In 1810 Henry Crabbe Robinson had pre- 
sented Lamb with a print by Da Vinci entitled " Vierge aux Bochers." 
It was specially liked by Charles and Mary, and Lamb addressed a 
poem to it. 

Page 65, 1. 10. " Swift." Jonathan Swift, a noted English 
divine and writer, born in 1007, died, 1745. 

1. 10. "Burns." Robert Burns, the most famous Scottish poet, 
whose poems were first issued at Kilmarnock in 1780. Born, 1759, 
and died, 1790. 

1. 23. "Thomson." James Thomson, a British poet, born, 1700, 
died, 1748. 

1.24. "Smollett." Tobias Smollett, a noted English historian, 
born, 1721, died, 1771. "Humphrey Clinker" was his most noted 
novel. 



NOTES. 101 

1. 27. "Hume.'" David Hume, a distinguished English historian, 
born, 1711, died, 1776. 

Page 66, 1. 0. "Hugh of Lincoln." An English boy whose 
alleged death was caused by Jews at London in 1255. He is the 
subject of one of Chaucer's tales. 

1. 23. " Congeeing." Conge is a French word meaning leave, per- 
mission ; Latin is commeatus, i.e. Leave of absence, from " com" and 
" meagre." 

Page 67, 1. 1. "Shibboleth." (See Judges xii.) A word originally 
used as a test to distinguish the Ephraimites from the Gileadites. 

Page 68, 1. 2. "Evelyn." John Evelyn. A noted English dia- 
rist, born, 1620, died, 1706. 

1. 4. " To sit a guest " etc. See Daniel i. 8-17. 

1. 27. " Laic-truth." Such truth as might be expected from a lay- 
man, i.e. approximating correctness. 

Page 69, 1. 24. " Andover." An English town in Hampshire, near 
Winchester. 

Page 70, 1. 19. "Exeter." A town in Devonshire. 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 

This essay first appeared in the London Magazine for November, 
1820. In the Gentleman' 1 s Magazine for June, 1813, there had 
appeared an article entitled, " Recollections of Christ's Hospital," 
which was reprinted, with little alteration, in Lamb's " Works," Lon- 
don, 1818. It was called forth by an alleged abuse of the presenta- 
tion system then in vogue at the famous Blue Coat School, and 
contained a serious tribute to the worth and dignity of the school. 
In the second essay Lamb ingeniously sought to play a joke upon the 
public by reviewing himself. Much autobiography is woven into both 
essays, and in the second one there are many references to his old 
schoolfellows, notably to Coleridge. In the first part of this essay, 
under the reference to "L.," Lamb assumes the personality of Cole- 
ridge. On page 79 and onward, he drops the pretense. 

Page 71, 1. 15. "The present worthy sub-treasurer." Mr. Ran- 
dal Norris, a friend of Lamb. 

1.18. "Battening," growing fat; said ironically. "Crug." Christ 
Hospital slang for bread. 

1. 19. "Piggins." Small wooden pail. The word is derived from 
the Gaelic "pigean." It is also spelled peggins. 

1. 25. " Millet." The name of several cereal and forage grasses, 
which bear an abundance of small, round, edible grains. "Banyan." 
Really vegetarian days, derived from the Anglo-Indian name for the 
Banyas, or Hindu traders, who ate no meat. 



102 NOTES. 

Page 72, 1. 3. " Half-pickled Sundays," i.e. when the beef was 
partially salted, or pickled in brine. 
1. 4. " Caro equina.''' 1 Literally, horse flesh. 
1. 6. " Scrags." Bony pieces of meat. 
1.11. "griskin." The back of a hog. 

1.16. " Cates." Delicacies or dainties. 

1.17. "TheTishbite." Elijah. (See 1 Kings xvii. 4-6.) 

Page 73. 1. 3. " Sweet Calne in Wiltshire." Here Lamb evidently 
referred, with his usual love of mystification, to Ottery St. Mary, in 
Devonshire, where Coleridge then resided. 

1. 12. "The New River." At Am well, in Hertfordshire, there was 
a famous spring, which by an artificial channel was conveyed to Lon- 
don. (See the essay called " Amicus Redivivus.' 1 '') It has long since 
been covered. 

1. 33. " Lions in the Tower." For many years, during a large part 
of Lamb's life, there was a menagerie near the entrance to the Tower 
of London, a most attractive place for boys. It was removed to the 
zoological gardens in 1831. 

1. 35. "L.'s governor." Lamb's father was a sort of servant to 
Samuel Salt, who was a bachelor of the Inner Temple. Through Mr. 
Salt's intervention, Lamb secured a presentation to the school, although 
he was formally presented by a Mr. Timothy Yeats, Christ's Hospital 
being a charity school. 

Page 74, 1. 21. "H ," "Hodges." Probably one of the 

teachers. 

1. 22. " Hulks." The name given to prison ships in those days. 

1. 24. "Nevis ... or St. Kitts." Two islands in the British 
West Indies. 

1. 25. " Tobin." Probably a West Indian planter and lawyer. 

1. 35. " Caligula's minion." Caligula was a Roman emperor, whose 
horse was made High Priest and Consul, and was kept in a marble 
stable set with precious stones. 

Page 75. 1. 6. "Jericho." (See Joshua vi. 5.) 

1. 8. "Smithfield." The well-known cattle market of London. 

1. 10. " Perry." The name of a steward in Christ's Hospital who 
died in 1785. He is mentioned particularly in "Recollections of 
Christ's Hospital." 

1. 18. " Verrio." Antonio Verrio was an Italian artist of compara- 
tive obscurity, who flourished in the sixteenth century. A large paint- 
ing by him hung on the walls of the school. 

1. 24. "Trojan in the hall of Dido." Like ^Eneas, as he contem- 



NOTES. 103 

plated the sculptures illustrating the Trojan war. He was the son of 
Venus and Anchises. Dido was the queen of Tyre and Carthage. 

1. 31. "A goule." More commonly spelled "ghoul," a demon 
which preys on dead human bodies. It is from the Persian word 
ghol, Arabic, ghul. 

Page 76, 1. 11. " The accursed thing." Literally, the stolen and 
concealed thing. Probably refers to the sin of Achan (see Joshua vii. 
13, etc.) who secreted a portion of the spoil in his tent. 

1. 23. " Chancery Lane." A well-known street in London. 

1. 31. "Mr. Hathaway." Another steward at Christ's Hospital. 
He succeeded Perry, mentioned above. He is mentioned also by Leigh 
Hunt. 

Page 77, 1. 24. "Bedlam." In 1547 Henry VIII. established in 
London a hospital called St. Mary of Bethlehem. It was afterward 
converted into a lunatic asylum. Bedlam is a corruption of Beth- 
lehem. 

1. 31. "Beadle." A parish officer in the Church of England, per- 
forming various duties. 

Page 78, 1. 7. Auto da fe, i.e. Act of faith. The Spanish burned 
heretics alive, and the ceremony was called " auto dafe." 

1.9. " Watchet-weeds." Blue garments. 

1. 14. "Dante." Dante degli Alighieri. The greatest of Italian 
poets. Born at Florence, 1265, died, 1321. 

1. 24. " Ultima Supplicia.'''' A Latin expression, meaning extreme 
punishments. 

1. 30. "Lictor." A Roman official in attendance upon high dig- 
nitaries. 

Footnote. " Howard." John Howard, a noted prison reformer 
of the eighteenth century. "Holy Paul." St. Paul's Cathedral, 
London, in which was erected a statue to John Howard. 

Page 79, 1. 6. "San Benito." A heretic of the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion who was arrayed for execution in a yellow garment with figures 
of devils painted over it, was dubbed a "San Benito." 

1. 7. " Runagates." A corruption of the French renegat, meaning 
the same as our word renegade, fugitive, runaway. In Latin, the word 
renegatus means one who denies the faith. 

Page 80, 1. 0. " Insolent Greece or haughty Rome." Quoted from 
Ben Jonson's " Discoveries." 

1. 7. " Peter Wilkins." In 1750 appeared a book by Robert Pat- 
lock, entitled "The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins." It was 
written somewhat in the style of " Gulliver's Travels." The hero was 



104 NOTES. 

shipwrecked on an island of flying men and women. The romance 
was a great favorite with Sir Walter Scott. 

1. 8. "The Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle" was a 
story by W. R. Chetwood, published in 1825. 

1. 11. "Cat-cradles." Figures made by interlacing strings over 
fingers and thumb. 

1. 16. "Rousseau." Jean Jacques Rousseau was a distinguished 
French writer of the eighteenth century. 

1. 28. "Phsedrus." A Latin writer of the age of Augustus. He 
translated iEsop's " Fables" into iambic verse. 

1. 34. "Helots to his young Spartans," i.e. examples of moral 
depravity to warn his severely trained pupils. The slave class of 
Laconia (Helots) were made drunk, and then introduced as objects of 
derision at public feasts, to inspire the Spartan youths to sobriety by 
disgusting them with bestiality. 

Page 81, 1. 2. "Sardonic grin." From the Latin sardonieus, 
meaning sneering, sarcastic. The word was probably derived from a 
Greek word given to a Sardinian plant, which, when eaten, was said 
to contort the face. 

1. 4. " Xenophon." An Athenian writer and historian, date of 
birth unknown. He died about 350 b.c. 

1.5. "Samite." The Greek philosopher Pythagoras was a native 
of Samos. He did not allow his pupils to address him until they had 
listened to his lectures for five years. 

1. 10. "Gideon's miracle." (Judges iv. 37, 38.) 

1. 16. " Elysian exemptions." In Greek mythology Elysium was 
the dwelling place of pure souls. Here it means delightful freedom 
from care. 

1. 21. " Ululantes." Literally, the shrieking ones. Here it is used 
to denote those who were whipped. "Tartarus." The Greek name 
for hell, or place of torment. 

1. 25. "Flaccus's." Horace, whose name was Quintus Horatius 
Flaccus. He was a Latin poet, born, 65 b.c, and died, 8 b.c. 

1. 26. " Tristis severitas in vultu, inspicere in patinas." Literally, 
there is puritanic gravity in his face, conviction in his words. 

1. 27. "Terence." A Latin writer whose full name was Publius 
Terentius Afer. Born, 185 b.c, died, 159 b.c He wrote comic poetry 
and comedies. 

Page 82, 1. 14. " Od's my life." An oath for " As God is my life." 

1. 20. "Devil's Litany." Any form of prayer used by the devil. 

1.22. " Babidus furor." Latin for Raging frenzy. 



NOTES. 105 

1. 24. " Reading the Debates." It was the custom in the eighteenth 
century for well-informed people to read with great particularity the 
parliamentary debate. - 

1.31. "Grecian." The highest grade at Christ's Hospital. Those 
who held this rank generally went either to Oxford or Cambridge, and 
afterward went into the Church. 

Page 83, 1. 10. " Cicero De Amicitia." On friendship; a well- 
known essay, by Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman orator and philoso- 
pher, born, 106 B.C., died, 43 b.c 

1. 15. "Thomas Fanshaw Middleton," born, 1769, died, 1822. A 
noted English divine and Greek scholar. He became Bishop of Cal- 
cutta. 

1. 19. "Sharpe." Samuel Sharpe, an English scholar and New 
Testament critic, born, 1799, died, 1881. 

1. 20. " Regni novitas.' 1 ' 1 Literally, an infant realm; here meant 
some newly established authority. 

1. 22. "Jewel or Hooker. 1 ' John Jewel was born, 1522, and died, 
1571. He was Bishop of Salisbury, and a noted writer. Richard 
Hooker was also a famous writer, known best for his " Laws of Eccle- 
siastical Polity." He was born in 1544 and died in 1594. 

1. 27. " Richards." Probably a fictitious author. 

1. 29. "PoorS ." A boy named Scott who died in Bedlam. 

" M ," probably fictitious. 

1. 31. In Matthew Prior's "Carmen Saeculare" for 1700, Stanza 
VII., occur two lines, running thus : — 

" Finding some of Stuart's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by." 

After Lamb's frequent habit, this is a misquotation, made to suit the 
occasion. 

Page 84, 1. 5. "Mirandula." A young Italian nobleman, a friend 
<>f Lorenzo de Medici. He was a great favorite, and noted for his 
learning. 

1. 7. " Jamblichus." A Greek philosopher of the fourth century, a 
follower of Plotinus, who was also a Greek philosopher and founder 
of the Neo-Platonic School, 203-270 a.d. 

1. 10. " Grey Friars." A famous London School, built on the site 
of Grey Friars Monastery. 

1. 12. "Old Fuller." Thomas Fuller, an English clergyman and 
writer, born, 1608, died, 1661. " C. V. Le G." Charles V. Le Grice, 
a school friend of Lamb's. 



106 NOTES. 

1. 26. " Nireus fonT/iosus" i.e. The handsomest boy. In Homer's 
Iliad Nireus was king of Samos, and next to Achilles he was the hand- 
somest of all the Greek warriors. 

1. 34. " Le G ." Samuel Le Grice, a brother of Charles Le Grice, 

a friend of Lamb's at Christ's Hospital. "F ." Captain Samuel 

Farell, who was killed at the battle of Salamanca, 1812. 

Page 85, 1. 2. " Sizar." See note on '"' Oxford in Vacation," page 
88, 1. 23. 

1. 8. " Fr ." A master of Hertford College, Oxford, named 

Franklin. 

1. 9. "Marmaduke T ." An English missionary named Thomp- 
son, of whom little is known. 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

This essay first appeared in the London Magazine for October, 1820. 

Page 86, 1. 4. " Quis sciilpsit." A Latin phrase for who was the 
engraver. 

1. 5. u Vivares, or a Woollet." Francois Vivares was a noted 
French engraver of the eighteenth century. William Woollet was an 
English engraver of the same period. 

1. 14. " Agnise." From Latin agnoscere, to recognize, to acknowl- 
edge. 

Page 87, 1. 10. "Joseph's vest." (See Genesis xxxvi.) 

1. 15. "Paul and Stephen and Barnabas." (See The Acts of the 
Apostles.) 

1. 17. " Andrew and John." Two of the twelve apostles. 

1. 20. " Baskett Prayer Book." John Baskett, an English printer 
and publisher, issued an illustrated prayer book in 1749. 

1. 21. " Peter." Simon Peter, one of the twelve apostles. " Bar- 
tlemy." An abbreviation for Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles. 

1.22. "Marsyas." In mythology Marsyas was a noted musician. 
He challenged Apollo, the god of Spring, to a contest of singing and 
playing, and suffered the penalty of death for his presumption, by 
being flayed by Apollo. 

1. 23. " Spagnoletti. " A seventeenth-century Spanish artist, whose 
full name was Jose Ribera II Spagnoletto. Born, 1588, died, 1656. 

1. 24. " Iscariot." One of the twelve apostles, whose full name 
was Judas Iscariot. 

1. 26. " Jude." One of the New Testament writers. 

1. 28. " Gaudy-day." An Oxford expression for a festival. 



NOTES. 107 

1. 34. "Epiphany." A Christian festival celebrated twelve days 
after Christmas. It commemorates the manifestation of Jesus Christ 
to the heathen. 

Page 88, 1. 9. "Selden." John Selden, born in 1584, died in 
1054. He was a jurist, author, and antiquarian. " Archbishop 
Usher." A distinguished English divine born in 1580, died in 1050. 

1. 12. "Bodley." Sir Thomas Bodley, who founded the famous 
library at Oxford, was born, 1544, died, 1012. 

1. 20. " Ad eundeni." An abbreviation for Ad eundem gradum, 
i.e. admitted without examination to the same degree. 

1. 23. "Sizar, or a Servitor." At Cambridge poor students were 
nicknamed Sizar, at Oxford Servitor ; the former from old English, 
and the latter from Latin origin. 

1. 33. " Christ's " and " Magdalen" were two of the most famous 
colleges in the University of Oxford. 

1. 35. "Devoir." French for duty; here it is meant in the sense 
of paying reverence to. 

Page 89, 1. 8. " Chaucer." Geoffrey Chaucer was England's first 
famous poet, born about 1340, and died in 1400. 

1. 10. " Manciple." A character in Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales " ; 
here meaning a steward or purveyor. 

1. 17. " Januses." The Roman god Janus had two faces, one look- 
ing into the past and the other into the future. 

1. 27. "Oxenford." The old name for the Thames was Ouse. 
Ouse-no-ford was therefore corrupted into Oxenford, i.e. Oxford. 

1. 27. "Arride." To please or gratify. The word has become 
archaic. 

1. 32. " Bodleians." Librarians, from Sir Thomas Bodley. 

Page 90, 1. 3. " Sciential apples." Literally, apples of knowledge. 
See Genesis ii. 17. 

1. 0. " Varice lectiones.'''' Latin for Various readings. 

1. 8. " Herculanean raker." Herculaneum, an ancient Roman 
city, was buried under the ashes and lava of Vesuvius, by an eruption 
of that volcano in 79. 

1. 10. "Porson." Richard Porson was a learned English scholar, 
professor of Greek at Cambridge. Born, 1759, died, 1808. " G. 

D ." George Dyer. A friend of Lamb's at Christ's College, and 

the historian of Cambridge. 

1. 12. " Oriel." One of the colleges of the university. 

1. 10. "Scapula." Johann Scapula was a German lexicographer, 
who lived in the sixteenth century. 



108 NOTES. 

1.19. "Clifford's Inn." One of the London legal societies; called 
also Inns of Court. 

1.32. "C ." Cambridge University. 

Page 91, 1. 7. " In manu." Latin for In hand. 

1. 11. "A priori.'" A Latin expression meaning presumptively, 
from considerations previous to experience. 

1. 17. "M.'s." Basil Montagu, a lawyer friend of Lamb. He 
edited Bacon's works. '-Bedford Square." A section of London. 

1.27. "Queen Lar." A corruption for the Latin Lares. The 
Romans had two sets of household gods, Lares and Penates. "A. S." 
Mrs. Montagu was a widow and had a married daughter, Ann Skipper. 
Mrs. Skipper afterward became the wife of Barry Cornwall (B. W. 
Procter). 

1.34. "Sosia." A slave mentioned in Plautus's play entitled 
" Amphitryon." 

Page 92, 1. 9. "Mount Tabor." A mountain in Palestine, not 
far from Nazareth. " Parnassus." A mountain in Greece which was 
sacred to the Muses, and to the god of poetry, Apollo. 

1. 10. " Harrington." James Harrington was born in 1611, and 
died in 1077. He was a political writer and philosopher. His romance 
entitled " Oceana," is his best-known work. 

1. 17. " Emanuel." The name of one of the famous colleges at 
Cambridge. 

1.31. " Agur's wish." (See Proverbs xxx. 8.) 

1.34. "Quarter's demand." In England, salaries are generally 
paid quarterly, viz. : Lady's day, March 25 ; Midsummer day, June 24 ; 
Michaelmas day, September 29 ; and Christmas, December 25. 

Page 93, 1. 22. " Bath." A famous watering place in England. 

1.23. "Buxton, Scarborough, Harrowgate." English watering 
places. 

1. 24. "Cam and Isis." The rivers upon which Cambridge and 
Oxford are situated. 

1. 26. ' ' Delectable Mountains. ' ' The mountains in Bunyan's ' ' Pil- 
grim's Progress." 

1. 29. "The Interpreter at the House Beautiful." A reference to 
the interpreter in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." 



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